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DUKE 
UNIVERSITY 


LIBRARY 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2023 with funding from 
Duke University Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/buildingpacificrO1 sabi 


BUILDING THE 
PACIFIC 
RAILWAY 


THE CONSTRUCTION-STORY OF AMERICA’S FIRST IRON 
THOROUGHFARE BETWEEN THE MISSOURI RIVER AND 
CALIFORNIA, FROM THE INCEPTION OF THE GREAT IDEA TO 
THE DAY, MAY 10, 1869, WHEN THE UNION PACIFIC AND 
THE CENTRAL PACIFIC JOINED TRACKS AT PROMONTORY 
POINT, UTAH, TO FORM THE NATION'S TRANSCONTINENTAL 


BY 
EDWIN L. SABIN 


WITH 22 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP 


What was it the engines said, 

Pilots touching—head to head, 

Facing on the single track, 

Half a world behind each back? 
—Bret Harte. 


PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 


J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
I9IQ 


COPYRIGHT, 19190, BY J. B. LIP’ 


PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOT 
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUA’ 
PHILADELPHIA, U. $ 


a)? 
hae 


bp 
£90 


OO We 
TO 


MR. FRANK A. WADLEIGH, P.T. M. 


DENVER & RIO GRANDE R. R. 


AN INSPIRING EXECUTIVE WHOSE DAILY SCHEDULE 
NEVER GIVES BUSINESS PRECEDENCE OVER COURTESY 


206288 


FOREWORD 


Firty years have passed since most of the events 
noted within this volume were new. On May 10, 18609, 
at Promontory Point, fifty-six miles northwest of 
Ogden, Utah, the last rails were laid and the last spike 
was driven, completing the Pacific Railway for quick 
traffic between the East and the West. 

Two distinct books might be written upon the con- 
struction of the Union Pacific Railroad from the Mis- 
souri River, and of the Central Pacific Railroad from 
the Sacramento River—those iron trails that lengthened 
westward and eastward until they crossed the vacant 
space of 1770 miles and joined in the Utah desert. 

The one book should focus upon the actual building 
operations in the great open of plains, mountains and 
deserts; the other, upon the financial operations by the 
Crédit Mobilier of the Union Pacific, and by Crocker & 
Co. and the Finance Company of the Central Pacific. 

The pages which here follow aim at providing the 
first-mentioned story. They are devoted mainly to the 
stress, the sweat, the toil by mind and body in order 
to achieve the physical problems. Deeds and romance 
a-plenty may be found, without resort to those disputed 
details that once made great names common property 
and are now relatively unimportant. That past is dead; 
an undying path brightens in the swath of Time. 

The writer of the present book wishes to tell only 


7 
206288 


FOREWORD 


how the Pacific Railway, the wonder of its age and of 
any age, came into being; how Lincoln, Judah, Hunt- 
ington, Stanford, Crecker, the Ameses, Durant, 
Dillon, Dodge, General Sherman, the two doughty 
Casements, the surveyors, the train crews, the laborers 
—Americans, Irishmen, Chinamen, Mormon settlers— 
all generously backed it, a young giant, in its relay race 
through half a continent, to the goal attained within 
six years instead of the allotted fourteen. 

The performance was typically American—the 
eighth wonder of the world, and unsurpassed to this 
day. Heroes attended upon the march of the rails. 
Some died in line of duty; as far as the writer knows, 
every department official, save one, of construction 
times, is dead. The Ames monument, so long lonely 
and near forgotten upon the Sherman Summit of the 
Wyoming Black Hills, and the neglected pedestal of tri- 
umph at distant Promontory, are punctuations in pages 
of historic endeavor by a host named and unnamed. 

The work itself, however, is not all forgotten. It 
was completed at the close of one great war, and was 
commemorated at the close of another. On May to, 
1919, there gathered at Ogden of Utah a remarkable 
concourse, representing the breadth and growth of the 
United States, who celebrated the semi-centennial of 
the driving of the Golden Spike.. More remarkable, a 
thousand names were enrolled of men and women who, 
some of them as children, assisted in laying those rails 
that “banded the continent and wedded the oceans.” 

8 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
EMG NURSERIES IO e809 12 or ois) o, stevic-a w stare’ xo wialelnren’ seeu ae cle 13 
II, CENTRAL PaciFic MEN AND METHODS............... 41 
III. Unron Paciric MEN AND METHODS.................. 69 
IV. PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC................. 96 
V. PRoGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC..................-- 129 
Wise iwACH, TO) THE “FINISH... 2. 2205 (2s sje cig sees w eutee 165 
EIDE REN RS oi 6) os alo ss cpa ae Lawsgee 200 
WihkIPwEOOmTON THE “PRAWS.. 2... coi. ee eee ee ekleb ewes 231 
PREIS EASOARING TOWNS, .- << fs 0000-0c8ss0g cree ede 254 
DeRROMRSTS TO END O' TRACK). 520006. cece ods eee clas 275 
DMEEEEMERUENENENDE eis SOE fe hee eee ik 304 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Siri ARMEEAMEE Bie ol oteipine ea erin id n.d ol oo a aie aide divin oc ain Frontispiece 
a eee ERMISIOOEOMES ne ato Seo oS cleo dae ond deep eeu aes 70 
(ERS SOLIS bo eee oe eee mene eats 70 
ee REC ASEITIONG oi. 1. onle noc winesdeoecseccwemscdvee 70 
ask? Li tic Soe oe ee ee ee eee re ae 70 
SCL Dts Se RS ee 120 
Piiemieie Mammo Camp, 1865... 2... cdc cec ccc cecenccctoc 120 
Wesel across the Plams, 1866... .. 0 eee ecco ene 158 
DSS TICIT PPA COS G57 aa ee ene Se a 158 
Grading Outfits Going to the Fore, Union Pacific Railway, 1867 174 
elssuetereebursments tric WOTESE. 2 5-5 2 oe ene ceo keecaseadeua 188 
esesin eRe ORCOE TIME LATIS < oS no oe ee ndee cebecknes 188 
The 1tooo-Mile Tree in Weber Canyon....-.........-..-.--- 198 
DEL Ligh Lato Sat Be eee een ile ene ey ieee D 198 
Rebs SLE SEAG \WROEIE «(270 425s volo o wisio anos wera ale olan esis 204 
Central Pacific Construction Camp, 1869.........--....----- 204 
The Engines Touch Noses, Promontory Summit, May 10, 1869 226 
(OREM OE eee PAICEMIMIEIVE: TEQ.. 2. ce he ne wwe ecctendecnene 230 
Tn the Days of the Old Wood Burners.........--.-.-..-.-- 230 

The General Grant Inspecting Party at Fort Sanders, Wyoming, 
esa fafa aia eo ces 2a Riors ai oheialm& uke eli oer Male 290 
CLE OL cir (OSes ea ee ae ge lan 302 
Interior of an Early Pullman Car, U. P.R.R................- 302 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC . 
RAILWAY 


I 
THe START 


THAT monument to American energy—the union 
of the East and of the Farthest West by a single iron 
highway almost 1800 miles long—was thirty years in 
the planning although only six years in the erecting. 
With those six, and especially with the last three, when, 
in hot rivalry, twain companies, facing opposite and 
pitting blood against blood, forged into their strides of 
two, five, seven, ten miles in a day, this narrative has 
chiefly to do. 

Over 1100 miles of double rails laid by hand in 
thirteen months, by two companies racing to meet: 
such is the record.? 

The Pacific Railway was nurtured through its in- 
fancy upon visions that seem fantastic to us now, yet 
were no more so than the prophecy of the new power as 


| ? This closely approaches an average of three miles of track a 

day, in desert and mountain country. As a comparison, it may be 
noted that the American army engineers in France, in 1918, 
achieved the mark of 130 miles of track in 100 days—being about 
one and one-third miles in a day. The Pacific Railway builders 
had no assistance from steam shovels, steam derricks, and the 
like. The first transcontinental was a “hand-made” road. 


13 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


spouted by the famous tea-kettle; than the genesis of 
the undersea boat in Jules Verne’s remarkable romance, 
and the promise of the oversea boat as given form and 
substance in Robert Fulton’s derided Clermont. 

The very inception of the great project of a trans- 
continental steam road dates exactly one hundred years 
ago, when, in 18109, fifteen years after Richard Trevi- | 
thick applied the first steam locomotive to the Welsh 
trams, the American Robert Mills proposed a steam 
carriage, to run from the head of the Mississippi Valley 
to the valley of the Columbia. The notion was so out- 
rageous that it was rightfully looked upon as a chimera 
—especially when, the next year, the proposition of the 
Englishman Thomas Gray for steam passenger sefvice | 
between Liverpool and Manchester was summarily dis- | 
missed. Half a century later, and the longest railroad 
in the world crossed American soil. 

The definite first bubble that really broke the surface 
of public thought in the United States was symptomatic 
of the rising national spirit. Back in early 1832 a 
writer pioneer, unknown by name, in the Emigrant, 
a weekly paper issued at Ann Arbor, Michigan, prefac- 
ing his proposition by another proposition that “it is 
nobler to fail in a great undertaking than to succeed in 
a small one,” modestly suggested a plan for a railroad 
from New York, by way of the Lakes and the Platte 
Valley, to Oregon. 

We of a later day, when invention and population | 
have made rough paths smooth, may fittingly take off | 

14 


4 
| 


| 


| 


THE START 


our hats to this untried Livingstone of a Dark Conti- 
nent. The year, 1832; the territory of the United 
States, west of the Mississippi, narrowly fringed with 
white, and extending red and wild and practically un- 
mapped for 1000 miles to the Rocky Mountains; beyond 
the barrier Rockies, all alien territory except for the 

Oregon Country, and this Oregon Country, the pro- 
| posed terminus, doubtful ground. 

That the feeble locomotives of the times could store 
fuel enough en route across the plains; that they could 
| combat the mighty slopes and excessive altitudes; that 
there could be traffic enough to warrant maintenance 
: of train service; that the routes could be adequately 
| protected against weather and savages; that laborers 
could be fed even if secured; that Mexico or England 
would look with favor upon such an invasion by the 
| Yankees—required a prodigy of faith. In all the 
United States there were but 140 miles of railroad, . 
_ from an experimental two years, and here it was pro- 
posed to build and operate 3000 miles in a straight- 
away beset like a Pilgrim’s Progress! 

However, the bubble was true harbinger of an 
event that should astonish the world. The germ idea 
by the article in the Emigrant persisted. 

Dr. Hartwell Carver, of Rochester, New York, 
grandson of the immortal Jonathan Carver whose 7000 
miles of travel through the Indian Northwest was as 
audacious as the projected railroad scheme, claimed 
'to have discovered the same idea in the same year, 
15 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


1832, and to have memorialized Congress for such a 
highway, of iron rails upon stone foundations, over 
which palace sleeping-cars sixteen feet long should run 
between New York and San Francisco Bay! 

At any rate Dr. Samuel Barlow, of Massachusetts, 
revives the discussion by an article in the [ntelligencer, 
1833. In the Knickerbocker Magazine of 1836 Lewis | 
Gaylord Clarke asserts fathership. In his “Tour 
Beyond the Rocky Mountains,” published in 1838, the 
Rev. Samuel Parker, of the pioneer Protestant mis- 
sionaries upon the Oregon Trail to the Columbia, de- 
clares that a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
is entirely practicable. The energetic Lilburn W. 
Boggs, early governor of Missouri, and worthy repre-_ 
sentative of the noted Boggs family of the old Santa Fé 
Trail, in 1843 draws up a scheme for the railroad, with 
estimate of cost. In 1844 Senator Thomas H. Benton, | 
the doughty expansionist and ambitious father-in-law 
to an equally ambitious explorer, predicts that men} 
then full-grown would live to see “ Asiatic commerce ” 
crossing the mountains by rail for the Atlantic coast. | 

The genius of the Pacific Railroad had taken the 
guise of a beneficent Asia—of an Orient that should 
pour its riches into the lap of America. The spices, 
the teas, the precious woods and fabrics of a Cathay 
should travel by steamship across the Pacific and by rail 
across the Western Continent, to heap the warehouses 
of New York. Imports and exports were to be quick- 
ened, Europe should be dependent upon this cut-off 

16 


THE START CG 


between West and East, and the Pacific Railroad should 
thrive upon the long haul rather than upon local traffic. 
In the workout, over 90 per cent. of the revenue 
was derived from the local traffic. But this condition 
would not have obtained in the beginnings. 
Meanwhile the Iowan, John Plumbe, Esq., had 
arisen. For four years, from 1836 to 1840, he worked 
by arguments written and spoken; the first of the 
“railroad meetings,” at Dubuque in 1838, is historic; 
he memorialized Congress, received attention favorable 
and adverse, and in 1847 was awarded in public assem- 
bly the title “ Original Projector of the great Oregon 
Railroad.” Fifteen years after, his plan was embodied 
in the first of the National Pacific Railroad acts. 
Now we arrive at the lamented Asa Whitney, the 
most thoroughgoing of all that file of enthusiasts: Asa 
Whitney, the New York merchant and Oriental 
traveler, who through a decade from 1845 labored 
faithfully in the cause; who wasted a fortune but not a 
life, although at the last he ran a dairy route in Wash- 
ington instead of a transcontinental road, and finally 
died before his reward came to him upon this earth. 
The Whitney plan proposed to build the railroad 
as a private venture by Whitney himself—its finances 
to be expedited by a grant of land thirty miles deep on 
ither side of the line. So much of the land was to be 
Id by Whitney as would pay for each ten miles of 
oad ; the remainder, if any, should remain in his posses- 
ion; the advancing colonists or settlers were to be the 


2 17 


: | 
BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 
| 


laborers. There were provisions by which the Govern- 
ment should check up on the expense, and should be 
favored by the traffic regulations. 

Partisanship and ignorance countered upon him 
with the easy weapons of deprecation and ridicule. A 
Boston committee endeavored to prove that if he built 
his ten miles of road in one year, by the delay of another 
year to sell the lands and three more years to collect the 
money he would be 380 years in his occupation; and 
that if he actually progressed at the limit speed of ten 
miles every year he would be 170 years at least between 
start and goal. 

The George Wilkes scheme, contemporaneous, 
vested the construction of the railroad, as a National 
issue, in Congress, with the United States Treasury, 
and not a grant of the public domain, as its fund. 
Nevertheless, he was impressed with the belief that 
to avoid speculation in the adjacent lands, 100 acre 
might well be allotted to each laborer and mechanic who, 
helped blaze the trail. 

Either plan was as feasible, at this time, as that o 
the indefatigable Senator Benton, who presently de 
manded the reservation of a strip a mile wide along the 
whole course of the track, for a chain of army post 
and, maintained at Government expense, “a plain old 
English road such as we have been accustomed to al 
our lives—a road on which the farmer in his wagon or 
carriage, on horse or on foot, may travel, without fear 
and without tax, with none to run over him or make: 
him jump out of the way.” | 

i8 


THE START 


Nevertheless, Senator Benton, the Old Bullion of 
National finance, was no unreasonable visionary. For 
a dozen years the National Turnpike, well graded and 
macadamized, had extended from Washington to St. 
Louis, as a great thoroughfare for emigrant wagons 
and stage-coaches. He may rest secured by the buckler 
of time: when he advocated his extension of a national 
road across the then unknown West he was the pilot 
of the pleasure-car and the auto-truck. 

As a matter of fact, seven years later, or in 1856, 
the astute Captain William Tecumseh Sherman, then 
a San Francisco banker, emphasized the need for such 
a transcontinental wagon-road under military protec- 
tion, and forwarded a California petition to Congress, 
upon the subject. 

“ And,” supplemented the Senator, again referring 
to the railroad itself, “ let it be adorned with its crown- 
ing honor, the colossal statue of the great Columbus, 
whose design it accomplishes, hewn from the granite 
mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains overlooking the 
road, the mountain itself the pedestal, and the statue 
a part of the mountain, pointing with outstretched arm 
to the western horizon, and saying to the flying pas- 
senger, ‘ There is the East! There is India!’ ” 

In regard to the engineering bogies that hedged a 
route from St. Louis west almost as the bird flies, to 
San Francisco—no scientific figures were required! 

“ There is a class of topographical engineers older 
than the schools and more unerring than the mathe- 

19 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


matics,” pronounced the sturdy rule-of-thumb pro- 

moter, although Frémont himself was an engineer. — 
“They are the wild animals—buffalo, elk, deer, ante- 
lope, bears—which traverse the forests not by compass 
but by an instinct that leads them always the right way 
to the lowest passes in the mountains, the shallowest 


fords in the rivers . . . and the shortest prac- 
ticable lines between remote points. A buffalo road be- 
comes a war-path ... and — the macadamized _ 


or rail road of the seientifie man.’ 

But the crowding events of the past span ccanbicniel 
to minimize the once splendid vision of the Emigrant | 
contributor, whose railroad should make his United — 
States “the first nation of the world”; and of Asa 
Whitney, who would “ civilize and Christianize man- 
kind,” and ‘compel Europe on the one side and Asia 
and Africa on the other to pass through us.” They 
began to color the florid word-pictures of Benton, and 
place politics above patriotism, prejudice above presci- 
ence, spoils above principles. 

The claim of the United States to the Oregon Coun- 
try had been substantiated ; Texas had joined the Union; 
California had warmed to the Stars and Stripes, and 
all the intervening land east to the Rocky Mountains 
was American soil. Without a break the Republic ex- 
tended from ocean to ocean, and from the Rio Grande 
to the accepted 49° north. 

The Mormons were cultivating once sterile Utah; 
a great westward inflow of population, flooding the 

20 


THE STAR 


emigrant trails to Oregon and the California gold-fields, 
had astounded the wastes of deserts and mountains; 
and realizing full well that a people’s destiny might 
ride triumphant upon the first overland train, the North 
and the South became rivals. 

For the question of slave labor or of free labor, to 
erect edifices and till the waiting soils, weighted the 
national balances. The answer lay in preponderance 
of citizenship—the voice of the polls. | 

With the engaging Pierce and the cautious Buch- 
anan in the executive chair, Jefferson Davis as secre- 
tary of war and later as senator ; with Floyd of Tennes- 
see his successor in the War Department and Brown 
of Tennessee as postmaster-general, and the debaters 
of the South not a whit inferior to those of the North, 
during this period from 1850 to 1860 the South more 
than upheld its end of the argument. 

Out of singular blindness, brought on by the egotism 
of thirty years’ national prominence, Benton thus ad- 
dressed the young Charles Sumner, Massachusetts’ new 
senator, in 1851: 

“You have come upon the stage too late, sir; all 
our great men have passed away. Mr. Calhoun and 
Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster are gone. Not only have 
the great men passed away, but the great issues too, 
faised from our form of government, and of the deep- 
est interest to its founders and their immediate descend- 
ants, have been settled also. The last of these was the 
National Bank, and that has been overthrown forever. 


2i 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Nothing is left you, sir, but puny sectional questions 
and petty strifes about slavery and fugitive slave laws 
involving no national interests.” ’ 

In defiance of the prophecy, as a burning question 
the route of the Pacific Railroad flamed forth to rival 
the heat of the Missouri Compromise. It engaged the — 
best minds of the day—and those minds were among 
the best that the halls of Congress have ever fostered. — 

Calhoun and Webster and Benton had spoken, but © 
Douglas, Houston, Seward, Rusk of Texas, Salmon P. 
Chase, Lewis Cass, Thaddeus Stevens, Curtis of Iowa, 
James Mason of Virginia, John Sherman of Ohio, 
Henry Wilson of the Massachusetts Know-Nothings, 
Sumner himself, and their peers in Senate and House 
proposed, objected, sparred and parried, in the interests 
of a constituency large or small. The columns of the 
Congressional Globe bristle with the magic titles “ The 
Pacific Railroad,” ‘‘ Central National,” “ Atlantic and 
Pacific,” a ‘“‘ Southern Pacific,” a “ Northern Pacific,” 
and so on. 

The topic obsessed public thought until Senator 
Butler of South Carolina compared the worship of 
it to the worship of the god Nile, and Senator Rusk’s 
appellation “ Colossus of Rhodes ” brought the happier - 
appellation “ Colossus of Rail-Rhodes.” 

The United States, like the Omnia Gallia of Czsar, . 
was divided into three parts. A faction, voiced chiefly | 
by Seward, favored the northern route of Whitney, | 
running through Chicago to the Pacific coast; a faction, | 


22 


THE START 


with Benton as first spokesman, favored a central route, 
out of St. Louis, to operate across the Rocky Moun- 
tains by a pass assumed to have been discovered at the 
head of the Rio Grande by the errant Frémont in his ill- 
fated expedition of 1848, and by the expedition of 1853 
transferred to the Cochetopa Pass, farther north in 
Colorado; a faction representing the alarmed South, 
championed by Houston and Rusk of Texas, Jefferson 
Davis, and their compatriots, through word of mouth or 
of pen and influence more subtle, advanced the claims 
of the southern route, with emphasis upon a line by 
way of El Paso to San Diego. 

Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Charleston, Vicks- 
burg, the mouth of the Ohio—these were among the 
eastern terminals; New York sat expectant of the large 
end of the cornucopia. San Francisco, Monterey, San 
Diego, were the western terminals, with a branch line 
north to the mouth of the Columbia. 

But California wished only the road, and the road 
it was determined to have. Senators Gwin and Fré- 
mont had their instructions. The plea of 1853 to 
Congress rang poignant: 

The distance to California by way of Cape Horn 
was more than the entire circumference of the globe 
on the latitude of San Francisco. The other carrying 
route, across the Isthmus, equalled the distance from 
Washington to Pekin. Great Britain was projecting a 
railroad of 1600 miles out of Halifax. 

“ Shall we who have beaten them [the British] in 

23 


| 

BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY | 

clipper ships, swift steamers and other useful notions 

yield to them the palm of building the longest cubes | | 
on the American continent? Never!” 

Many an aspiring traveller across from east to west | 
spied out the proper route for the Pacific Railroad.” 
Captain Howard Stansbury, exploring to the Salt Lake 
in 1849, had made official recommendations. By direc- 
tion of Congress in 1853, Secretary of War Jefferson | 
Davis had sent out those notable five columns, under the, 
auspices of the Corps of Engineers, “to ascertain the | 
most practicable and economical route for a railroad 
from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.” They 
were officered by capable men, several of whom, such 
as Lieutenant George B. McClellan and Lieutenant 
John Pope, were slated to make national history. 

The trial routes selected for reconnoitre were popu- 
larly known as the Northern Trail (of Whitney), the | 
Mormon Trail, the Benton “ Buffalo ” Trail, the Thirty- ) 
fifth Parallel Trail, and the Southern Trail. The re- | 
sultant reports fill twelve large volumes with fascinat-_ 
ing narrative, pictures and maps, forming a classic of 
Government exploration, ! 

The estimate upon the Northern route, from St. 
Paul to Vancouver by way of the Upper Missouri, was 
1854 miles, at $117,121,000—increased by the War De- : 
partment to $130,781,000. The estimate upon the 
Mormon route from Council Bluffs to San Francisco 
by way of the South Pass and Salt Lake City was 
2032 miles, at $116,095,000. The estimate upon the 


24 


| 


THE START 


Buffalo (or Central) route from old Westport (Kansas 
City) to San Francisco by way of Frémont’s Cochetopa 
Pass of the southern Colorado Rockies was 2080 miles, 
at a cost “ impracticable.” Thus fell from grace Senator 
Benton’s pet scheme. The estimate upon the Thirty- 
fifth Parallel route, from Fort Smith of Arkansas to 
San Pedro (Los Angeles) by way of the present Pan- 
handle of northern Texas, northern New Mexico and 
northern Arizona across to Needles at the Colorado 
River, was 1892 miles, at $169,210,255. The esti- 
mate upon the Southern route, from Fulton at the Red 
River of southwestern Arkansas to San Pedro by way 
of central Texas and southern Arizona, was 1618 
miles, at, $68,970,000., 

The majority of these routes have been approxi- 
mated by the lines of the Northern Pacific, the Santa Fé, 
the Southern Pacific, and the Union Pacific from Coun- 
cil Bluffs to the mountains. But although an estimate 
of the Asa Whitney route from Chicago and through 
the north, including a bridge across the Mississippi and 
equipment and maintenance during construction of the 
road, had placed the cost at only $69,226,000, the re- 
ports of the Pacific Railroad surveys were clearly a 
feather for the cap of the South. 

The Northern Trail and the Mormon Trail were 
- declared almost impossible by reason of the snows. The 
Buffalo or Central of Benton had been summarily 
disposed of. The cost of the Thirty-fifth Parallel Trail 

out of Fort Smith, a terminal that would satisfactorily 
25 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


draw upon the trade of Little Rock, St. Louis, Memphis 
and other Southern centres, was prohibitory. The only 
route left, according to the recommendations of the 
Mississippian, Secretary Davis, was the far southern 
route. By climate, resources and first cost it stood 
forth paramount. 


But the surveys soon took on the phase of-twice-told — 


stories. The Northern interests yielded not an inch; 


the Southern interests fervidly declaimed that if public — 
-lands were to be apportioned to a railroad, the South — 
was entitled to equal benefits with any other section. — 
The spectre of Free Soil or Slave Soil dominion would ~ 


not down; and the character of the immigration into — 


the new States and Territories was the crux of the 
long-threshed matter. 


Events were shaping. Supporting California, the © 


Utah Mormons twice petitioned Congress for railroad — 


connection with the East. Out of Chicago the iron ~ 


rails were racing for the eastern border of Iowa, and 
thence keen eyes were peering across westward for the 


Missouri River and the Great Plains beyond. Com- — 


mencing its traverse of Iowa, the Mississippi and Mis- 


souri Railroad Company, parent line of the Chicago, — 
Rock Island and Pacific, already had dispatched a — 
young engineering chief, Grenville M. Dodge, to de- © 
termine the best point at which to strike the Missouri — 


| 


acto 


on Iowa’s western boundary, and to survey onward © 


into the Platte Valley. 


| 


The M. and M. was bolstered in its Washington | 


26 


o_ 


THE START 


lobby by other Chicago roads, and the Mormon route 
sprang again into prominence. In 1855 the first legis- 
lature of the new Territory of Nebraska memorialized 
Congress in behalf of a railroad by the trail of the 
Platte Valley. In 1856 the Frémont Republicans and 
the Buchanan Democrats inserted Pacific Railway 
planks into their National platforms—with the pur- 
pose, each, as states Colonel Alexander McClure, of 
winning the trans-Missouri States. The Republican 
plank declared for Government aid without qualifica- 
tions ; the Democratic plank, for the Federal aid to the 
extent of the constitutional power. 

In 1859 a tall, homely man by the name of Abraham 
Lincoln seeks young Dodge, in the Pacific Hotel at 
Council Bluffs, Iowa, and learns all that he has learned 
of the plains country from the Bluffs to the Rockies. 

This same year the Pike’s Peak Rush founds the 
magic city of Denver, more isolated and unprotected 
than even San Francisco; and here is a new half-way 
station in the vista of the Pacific Railroad. 

Samuel R. Curtis, of Iowa, prepares for Congress 
a bill that bears the name “ Union Pacific.” 

Horace Greeley, in his old white coat and dingy 
white hat, tours by Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak stage 


_to the Colorado gold camps, to the Mormon capital, and 


on to the Coast, preaching to plains and mountains and 
valleys upon that salient text, the Pacific Railroad. 
Denver, Gregory Gulch, Salt Lake, Placerville, 


Sacramento and San Francisco cheer him. 


27 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The pendulum had not definitely swung. St. Louis 


(Chicago’s rival) and the Central route still were 


strong. The Pacific Railroad convention there of 1849, 


attended by delegates from fifteen States and Terri- 
tories, had strongly petitioned Congress; the first 
Pacific Railroad (in due time the Missouri Pacific) had 


been organized, liberally subscribed, and with Govern- 
ment aid in lands had built 200 miles to Sedalia, its next 


goal Kansas City, but its mind upon California by 
either the northwest trail or the southwest trail; with 


the Southern Overland Stage line carrying the Govern- 


ment mail, and with the advantages of a snowless route 
shrieking to be heard, it is not improbable that the first 
of the through Pacific Railroads would have crossed 
the Rio Grande and the Colorado instead of the Platte 
and the Green had not the split in the Union seated the 


North firmly in the legislative saddle. 


The Butterfield Overland Stage mail contract was_ 


transferred by the Government to the Platte trail, 
whereon the new Central Overland California and 


Pike’s Peak stages, under Majors, Russell and Wad- 
dell, were manfully proving that the snows and the 


northern mountains had no terrors for the resolute. 
The Union was in doubt. Rumors flew like storm- 
driven snow-flakes—a Western Empire threatened and 
the loyalty of the Pacific Coast appeared uncertain. It 
was imperative, now more than ever, that California 
should be bound indissolubly to her distant sister States. 


The Republican party in its platform of 1860 declared 


28 


THE START 


vigorously for absolute Government aid that should 
insure the immediate construction of the Pacific Rail- 
way. The Douglas and Breckinridge Democratic 
parties were advocates reiterating for such aid as might 
be supplied “ under the constitution.” ? 

California, reading the writing of the stars, rose to 
her opportunity. 

Theodore D. Judah, contemporary of the young 
engineer Dodge, had explored the Sierra Nevada Range 
for a railroad route out of and into California. He 
had addressed a railroad meeting in San Francisco, 
September, 1859, attended by delegates from Washing- 
ton Territory, Oregon and California; the meeting had 
called upon Congress to note that the stages by the 
Oregon and California Trail had been operated regu- 
larly, summer and winter, and that California was 
prepared to welcome an incoming railroad at the State 
line with another railroad. Judah himself had ap- 
peared before Congress without results. 

In June, 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad of Cali- 
fornia was incorporated. Engineer Judah and his plans 
were again sent forward to Washington, by the Panama 
route, to help the California Congressmen. Vice- 
President Huntington of the new company soon has- 
tened overland by stage. 


?In his “Recollections of Half a Century” Colonel A. K 
McClure states that the broad scope of the Republican avowal, 
as compared with the more cautious utterance of the two 
Democratic parties and the prevalent belief in Democratic circles 
as to constitutional limitations in the matter of a National 
‘railway, was what swung California and Oregon into the Repub- 
lican column. 

29 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The hour had struck. From the wreak and wrack 
of the Free Soil contest that marked the travail of 
Nebraska and Kansas Territories the Pacific Railway 
had emerged disfigured but still in the ring. The waste- 
paper baskets of the Senate and House select commit- 
tees were crammed with railroad bills—bills for one 
road, for two roads, for three roads, by private enter- 
prise, by State enterprise, by Government enterprise; 
the Northern Pacific route, the People’s Pacific Rail- | 
road of the Perham Construction Company of Maine, 
and the old-time Central route were ready topics; but 
the apparition of a California and an Oregon tributary 
to the Confederacy or to foreign invasion crystallized 
sentiment into hard fact. 

The “ Little Congress,” reduced now all to North- 
ern iron, had before it apparently more pressing ques- 
tions than a National railroad until in January of the 
new year Sargent of California gained the floor of the 
House, and immediately stepped from the war discus- 
sion into the older well-beaten trail. 

He won attention, and with the tireless Judah’s 
help prepared still another railroad bill for the approval 
of the select committee. 


“Do I understand the gentleman from California 
to say that he actually expects this road to be built?” 
challenged Lovejoy of Illinois. 

“The gentleman from Illinois may understand me 
to predict that if this bill is passed the road will be 
finished within ten years,” was the instant response. 

30 


THE START 


The new bill, House Roll 364, was a revision of the 
Senator Rollins Missouri bill, which provided for sev- 
eral building lines from the borders of Iowa and Mis- 
souri to unite at the 102nd meridian—the Rollins bill 
itself being a substitute in the House for the Samuel 
R. Curtis (Iowa) bill. McDougall of California and 
the grand Harlan of Iowa adapted it to the demands 
of the Senate. 

St. Louis as the main terminal lost out; Missouri 
was a doubtful State. The bill as amended passed the 
Senate June 20, 1862; passed the House June 24 ; Presi- 
dent Lincoln signed it July 1; and after all those years, 
now at a troublous time, when capital would be shy 
and labor scarce, and the nation was suffering within 
its bowels the pangs of impending dissolution, in this 
summer of 1862 the Pacific Railroad at last was a 
potential entity. 

The title of this “ Act of 1862” reads: 

“An act to aid in the construction of a railroad and 
telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific 
Coast, and to secure ta the Government the use of the 
same for postal, military and other purposes.” 

The bill named 158 men, more or less prominent 
in business and finance, appointed from Rhode Island, 
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Missouri, California, Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, 
Illinois, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Maine, Vermont, 
Oregon, Wisconsin, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, 
New Hampshire, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, 

31 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


who together with five commissioners upon the part 


ne at i 


of the Government should be called the Board of — 


Commissioners of the Union Pacific Railroad and 
Telegraph Company. 

Very many of these names were of standing in 
National, State and business records. It is to be noted 


that among them were the dynamic Ben Holladay, of — 


New York and the West, who was on the eve of making 
the Overland Mail stage line a striking example of 
tremendous organization; Jacob Blickensderfer, of 
Ohio, an engineer who officiated for the Government 
upon advance surveys; Collis P. Huntington and Engi- 
neer Judah, of the Central Pacific Company, and 
Charles McLaughlin, one of the construction contrac- 
tors of the San Francisco and San José Railroad Com- 
pany, also of California; Hartwell Carver, the original 
sleeping-car promoter; Louis McLane, the head of 
the new Wells, Fargo & Company express merger; 


Samuel R. Curtis, the soldier statesman from Iowa, © 
now again in the army and wearing the laurels of Pea — 


Ridge; William B. Ogden, Chicago’s first mayor, twice 
a railroad president, about to be the first president of the 
Union Pacific, and soon the driving power behind its 
Missouri River connection, the Chicago and North- 
western; Henry Farnam, another Illinoisan, who with 


Thomas C. Durant (Union Pacific construction vice- — 


president and chief financier) was pushing the Rock 
Island into Iowa; and Governor John Evans as the sole 


representative from Colorado. Utah was unrepresented. 


32 


tae START 


Vested with all the usual powers of a corporate 
body, the commission and its associates were author- 
ized “to lay out, locate, construct, furnish, maintain 
and enjoy a continuous railroad and telegraph, with the 
appurtenances,” on a line that “shall commence at a 
point on the one hundredth meridian of longitude west 
from Greenwich, between the south margin of the 
valley of the Republican River and the north margin 
of the valley of the Platte River, in the territory of 
_ Nebraska, at a point to be fixed by the President of the 
United States, after actual surveys; thence running 
westerly upon the most direct, central and practicable 
route, through the territories of the United States, to 
. the western boundary of the territory of Nevada, there 
_to meet and connect with the line of the Central Pacific 
Railroad Company of California.” 
The tooth meridian as mentioned crosses the coun- 


try some sixty miles west of present Kearney, Nebraska. 
‘In the original House bill the commencement of the 
Union Pacific had been placed at the 102nd meridian. 
The Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad—a 
| Kansas company—was to build from a connection with 
the Missouri Pacific of St. Louis (the first ‘ Pacific 
Railroad”), at the mouth of the Kansas River, to the 
meridian, exact point not designated. As this left mat- 
‘ters to the St. Louis interests and to the State of 
Kansas, and as the Union Pacific was authorized only 
to build a branch line from Iowa to connect with the 
Kansas company at that meridian wherever made most 
3 33 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


convenient by the L., P. and W., obviously St. Louis 
was to be the main eastern terminal. 

The Senate amendments devised by Harlan effec- 
tually changed the aspect. The point of juncture was 
placed in the Territory of Nebraska (thus avoiding any 
conflict with States’ rights) and moyed 120 miles 
toward the Mississippi. The Leavenworth, Pawnee 
and Western was authorized to extend to connection 
there; so was the Hannibal and St. Joseph, from St. 
Joseph or Atchison on the Missouri north of the mouth 
of the Kansas; a branch to tap the northeast through 
Sioux City of Iowa was to be built, and the Union 
Pacific Company was also to extend from the 1ooth 
meridian eastward some 250 miles to a point on the 
western border of Iowa, as designated by the President. 

As these would be Union Pacific tracks, and with- 
out doubt would connect with one or more of the Chi- 


cago roads already building across Iowa, they would 
be the main line. The L., P. and W., a State corpora- 
tion, had 380 miles to build; therefore, as previously 
said, St. Louis had lost out. 

The Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western never didl 
connect with the Union Pacific at the 1ooth meridian. 
By act of Congress in 1866 it was permitted to diverge; 
and as the Kansas Pacific (the Union Pacific, Eastern 
Division) it battled heroic way by the old Smoky Hill 
stage route through the opposing Indians of northern 
Kansas and entered Denver direct. 

The Hannibal and St. Joseph, organized as far back | 
as 1847, became a part of the great Burlington system. 

34 


THE START 


The Sioux City and Pacific branch was built, under 
its own charter, to Frémont, Nebraska. 

The roads as named, and the Central Pacific Com- 
pany of California should be entitled to right of way, 
through public land, of 200 feet width on either side of 
their tracks, and the privilege of taking earth, stone, 
timber and other material from the public lands adja- 
cent—the United States pledging itself to extinguish 
the Indian titles along the route. This provision was 
rather necessary, inasmuch as here and below we have 
a Government contracting to deliver land that it did 
not actually possess. 

’ Asa subsidy there was granted vacant lands within 
ten miles on either side of the lines for five alternate 
sections per mile—mineral lands alone excepted. 

As further financial aid the Government would lend 
$1000 6 per cent. thirty-year bonds as follows: On 
150 miles of mountain construction, $48,000 per 
mile; on construction to the base of the mountains, 
$16,000 per mile; on the construction through the 
basin between the Rockies and the Sierra, $32,000 
per mile. The whole amount of the loan should 
not exceed $50,000,000. 

But the grants and bonds should apply to the Han- 
nibal and St. Joseph upon only 100 miles west of the 
Missouri River—this as a check should that company 
unite with the L., P. and W. 

The Central Pacific Company of California was to 
build east from the Pacific coast at or near San Fran- 

35 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


cisco to the eastern boundary of California, and there — 


meet and join the Union Pacific and form one continu- 
ous line with it. 

“The track upon the entire line of railroad and 
branches shall be of uniform width, to be determined 
by the President of the United States, so that, when 
completed, cars can be run from the Missouri River 
to the Pacific coast ; the grades and curves shall not ex- 
ceed the maximum grades and curves of the Baltimore 


ial 
e 


4 


and Ohio Railroad [7.e., 116 feet to the mile and radius ~ 


of 400 feet to the mile] ; the whole line or said railroad 


and branches and telegraph shall be operated . . . 


as one connected continuous line.” 


If the Union Pacific should reach the California 
boundary before the Central Pacific, it might continue — 


on, with the consent of that State, to another meeting 
point. Conversely, the Central Company, if arrived 


first, might continue on. And both the Central and the — 
L., P. and W., having completed their lines, might — 


unite with the Union Pacific to build that road across 
the space of country yet unoccupied by it. 
The L., P. and W. was required to complete 100 


miles of road westward from the mouth of the Kansas — 


River within two years after formal acceptance of the 
provisions of the act, and then at the rate of 100 miles 
a year to its western terminal. The Central Company 
was required to complete fifty miles of road within the 
first two years after assent to the act, and fifty miles 


each year following. The Union Pacific Company was — 


36 


THE START 


required to complete 100 miles of road and telegraph 
west from the border of Iowa within the first two years, 
and 100 miles a year thereafter. 

The connection at the Nevada-California boundary 
should be made within twelve years, or before the first 
day of July, 1874; and there must be “a continuous 
line of railroad, ready for use, from the Missouri River 
to the navigable waters of the Sacramento River, in 
California, by the first day of July, eighteen hundred 
and seventy-six.” 

The rails and other iron must be of the best Ameri- 
can manufacture only. j 

Two Government directors should sit with the final 
board. Three Government commissioners should in- 
spect each forty miles of road and telegraph line as 
completed; and upon their approval of the work and 
equipment the bonds and the land patents pertaining 
to these forty miles should be issued. The delivery 
of the bonds constituted a first mortgage upon the 
whole line of railroad and telegraph, to insure payment 
of principal and interest advanced by the United States. 

Government dispatches, troops, mails, munitions 
and so forth were to be forwarded at fair rates not 
in excess of rates charged to private parties; and the 
compensation as agreed should be credited by the 
Government upon the payment of the companies’ 
indebtedness to it. 

Permission was given to utilize, if desired, the al- 
ready existing telegraph line across the continent. 

37 


4) 
BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY | 

There were other provisions, including, of course, | 
penalties for non-completion according to specifications — 
and for defaults in payments of principal and interest; _ 
but the foregoing are the striking features of the por- | 
tentous Act of 1862. ! 

The act had passed the Senate by a vote of 25 to 53; _ 
had passed the House by a vote of 104 to 21. How- 
ever, the lavish subsidies, of $50,000,000 in bonds and © 
of public lands aggregating 11,000,000 acres for the 
main Union Pacific and Central Pacific (amount 
doubled by an amendment of 1864), startled the old- 
school cautious people as a dangerous precedent. 

Above the alarmist protests the voice of the great — 
Free Soiler, Senator Henry Wilson, Sumner’s col- 
league from Massachusetts, and in after day to be 
Grant’s vice-president, reéchoed clearly: 

“TI give no grudging vote in giving away either 
money or land. I would sink $100,000,000 to build 
the road, and do it most cheerfully, and think I had 
done a great thing for my country. What are 
$75,000,000 or $100,000,000 in opening a railroad 
across the central regions of this Continent, that shall 
connect the people of the Atlantic and Pacific, and bind 
us together? Nothing. As to the lands, I don’t 
begrudge them.” 

While in contrast General William Tecumseh Sher- — 
man, wet-blanketing his brother from Ohio but eventu- 
ally one of the strongest supporters of the vast enter- 


prise, goes on alleged record: 
38 


THE START 


“A railroad to the Pacific? I would hate to buy a 
ticket on it for my grandchildren!” 

It was 19,000 miles around the Horn. In 1862 by 
the improved Panama route New York and San Fran- 
cisco were separated four and five weeks. By the Con- 
cords on the Overland Stage line the time between the 
Missouri River and California was seventeen days. 
Between end of railroad, at St. Joseph, and Placerville 
of California the galloping Pony Express had been 
carrying tissue-paper mail, for $1 the half-ounce, in 
eight days—a marvel of achievement until the Over- 
land Telegraph of the budding Western Union had 
stabled the last relay. 

And it still was seventeen days—112 miles in every 
twenty-four hours—for mail and citizens. As to 
moving troops and government supplies, the march of 
the Mounted Rifle regiment from Fort Leavenworth 
to Oregon in 1849 had consumed five months; the 
Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston’s “ Army of Utah” 
had been over three months marching from Leaven- 
worth to Fort Bridger of the Rockies in the summer 
and fall of 1857. 

The exigencies of a war threatening the Pacific 
country would crowd the Panama route; and the haz- 
ards of war would render the long trip down the At- 
lantic, across the Isthmus, and up the Pacific an under- 
taking trebly fraught with menace. 

Now war had come from an awkward quarter—a 
quarter that closed the exit of transports from New, 

39 


; 
BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY | 


Orleans, and imperiled the high seas to the Isthmus, 
The Trent affair, by which England was almost alien- 
ated, and the disaffection in California which seemed to 
incline her toward the Confederacy or a Pacific Re- 
public, sharpened the call for quick and secure interior 
communication between East and Farthest West. 

A Pacific Railroad therefore was a military measure 
as well as a measure for domestic improvement; and 
while it never developed into a Rebellion measure, and 
its actual military province was that of subduing the 
Indians, its prospective course through loyal territory 
appeared to be an asset. 

The Central Pacific Railroad Company of Cali- 
fornia had been well organized and was straining at the 
leash. The new Union Pacific Company, more diffuse 
in its personnel and interests, needs must mark time 
for a spell. Consequently the operations of the Central 
come first. 


II 


CENTRAL PaciFic MEN AND METHODS 


By its marriage with the Southern Pacific, the Cen- 
tral Pacific somewhat lost its identity as a pioneer 
across continent. The S. P. locomotives and cars have 
long been the occupants of the C. P. tracks on the main 
line between San Francisco Bay and the Great Salt 
Lake. Few passengers, of all the annual host switched 
so easily over the long grades and the high bridges 
of the Sierra and sped thundering through snowsheds 
and tunnels, think “‘ Central Pacific.” 

On the contrary, the Union Pacific, which formed 
the link from the Missouri.to the Salt Lake, has re- 
tained the prestige of its building name. 

Not only was the Central Pacific the first to leave 
its take-off, separated from the opposing take-off by 
1770 miles, but the stamina that fed its youth was the 
dynamic force of five men: Leland Stanford, Collis 
Potter Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, 
and Theodore D. Judah, all of Sacramento. 

They were young, that is to say, verging upon the 
time of life when man’s mental and physical energies 
should be at their best combination. 

Leland Stanford, a delegate to the Lincoln conven- 
tion in Chicago, and who at the organization of the 
Central Pacific Company had been ten days nominated 
for first Republican governor of California, was thirty- 

41 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


seven. He had been born a farmer’s boy, near Albany, 
N. Y.; was by early profession a lawyer, had moved 
from Wisconsin to California in 1852, and for a period 
of half a dozen years before his elevation to the execu- 
tive chair of the State had been a member of the mer- 
cantile firm of Stanford Brothers, Sacramento, dealers 
in groceries and provisions. | 

Railroad work had interested him since heshong 
His father, Josiah Stanford, had been engaged upon 
the second of the all-steam railroads in the United 
States, the first to use the truck-wheeled locomotive 
and the first to experiment with a coal-burner. This 
was the Mohawk and Hudson, later the Albany and 
Schenectady, of the present New York Central, whose 
line in 1831 ran past the Stanford farm. 

It is a curious coincidence that upon this line, at the 
time its engine the little “John Bull” attracted the 
attention of the urchin Leland Stanford, destined to 
be president of the Central Pacific, there was employed 
the stripling Sidney Dillon, destined to be, in a same 
year, the president of the Union Pacific; and that, 
during the construction period of the Pacific Railway 
they two, one buoying the C. P., the other buoying the 
U. P., approached each other across continent until 
they met at Promontory Point, Utah. 

Leland Stanford, California’s war governor for 
two years, was a man of hearty, ruddy aspect, of massy 
brow and high principles, of immaculate garb and suave 
but forceful presence. His name endures not only as 

42 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


that of a great citizen, but likewise in Leland Stanford, 
Jr., University, founded by him as a memorial to his 
son. Long before his death in 1893 he had acquired a 
large fortune. 

Collis Potter Huntington, in 1862 aged forty-one, 
had been born a Connecticut Yankee, was a Forty-| 
niner by the Panama route, from Oneonta, N. Y., to| 
California, and at the launching of the Central Pacific | 
was senior member of the firm of Huntington and Hop- | 
kins, hardware and miners’ supplies, Sacramento. At 
his death in 1900 he had outlived his three colleagues. 
His name is synonymous with the Southern Pacific 
Railroad system, of which he became president. 
Through his nephews the same name is attached to 
other immense enterprises, in Southern California, and 
also in the East. 

Gifted in mind, frame and features, he early proved 
himself as a man of most tenacious purpose, and as a 
consummate manipulator of affairs when dealing with 
fellow-men. Activity characterized his whole course; 
but—“ I do not work hard. I work easy,’ was his 
significant phrase. 

‘Mark Hopkins, his partner, and his associate in the 
Central Pacific, aged forty-nine, of New York State 
birth, had been an Argonaut by land from Michigan to 
San Francisco. He had studied law as a business train- 
ing, and in Sacramento was known as a very con- 
servative but sound business man. 

As compared with Mr. Huntington he was of 

43 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY ; 


darker complexion, slighter physique, and of less pro- 
nounced but scarcely less efficient methods. He and 
Huntington were partners in the mercantile trade for 
twenty years. “One of the truest and best men that — 
ever lived,” is the encomium upon him, “If Mark 
Hopkins had told me that he had sold my dwelling — 
house, and if he sent me the deed of sale, I would have ) 
signed it without reading it,” Mr. Huntington testified. — 
His conservatism made him the dependable member) — 
to whom was referred the final decision upon debated | F 
matters. “I never thought anything finished until — 
Hopkins looked at it,” asserted Huntington the lion. 

Charles Crocker was forty years of age; his birth- © 
place Troy, N. Y. He came from a hard-pushed family ; . 
had been a wage-earner since early boyhood. His pro- \ | 
fession was that of a forge man until, after arriving in 
California in 1850 and trying the mines, he opened the i 
leading dry-goods store in Sacramento. In 1860 
he had been elected to the State legislature on the ; 
Republican ticket. 

His forte was intense activity, both physical and — 
mental. ‘“ Loved work for work’s sake,” states Ban- © 
croft, California historian; could “drive” men in 
gangs—was a natural as well as a trained executive in 
the actual field; and according to his own words was 
“always trying to make a dollar buy a dollar and five 
cents’ worth.” He was stoutly built, heavy-featured, 
firm-lipped, with the blue eye of a fighter. His death 
occurred at Monterey, California, in 1888. 

44 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


Theodore D. Judah had been born at Bridgeport, 
Connecticut, and was thirty-five. Graduation from the 
Troy Polytechnic had started him upon a brilliant engi- 
neering career which terminated in his death in 1863. 
Thus he was deprived of the laurels that, more to him 
than material wealth, the future seemed to hold in store. 

Stanford, Huntington, Crocker and Hopkins 
formed the famous Big Four of California railroad 
enterprise through fifteen years—a unity broken by 
the death of Hopkins in 1878. 

Judah called a public meeting of Sacramento citi- 
zens to discuss his railroad project. Merchant Hunt- 
ington counseled him, aside, that such means might 
answer for a Fourth of July celebration, but were in- 
adequate for a scheme of this magnitude—the con- 
quest of the Sierra; invited him to come into his 

store and talk it over. 

After several meetings at the store of Huntington | 
and Hopkins, the Central Pacific Railroad Company of 
California, capitalized at 85,000 shares, par value $100, 
was organized on June 28, 1861, and incorporated under 
the laws of the State. Its name evidently sprang from 
the “Central” Overland stage route. A “ Central 
Route ”’ needed little advertising, for it had been much 
before the people. 

Leland Stanford, the Republican candidate for gov- 
ernor, was chosen president—a position that he held 
for thirty years, combining it with the presidency of 
the Southern Pacific Railroad also. Mr. Huntington 

45 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


was chosen vice-president; and his tenure of office like- | 
wise was long, connected with his presidency at an early — 
date of the Southern Pacific, parent company of the 

present S. P. coast and gulf system. 

Mark Hopkins was chosen treasurer; James Bailey, 
a Sacramento jeweller and patron of Judah, secretary. 

Among the directors was Edwin B. Crocker, brother _ 
of Charles Crocker, and soon to be the company’s at- 
torney. The principal stockholders subscribed to the 
extent of 150 shares each. 

Theodore Judah was, of course, the chief engineer. 
He had been imported from the East in 1854 as engi-| 
neer for the Sacramento Valley Railroad—the first of) 
the California iron roads, which succeeded in building 
from Sacramento east to Folsom, 22 miles, at a cost of 
$60,000 a mile. He was an enthusiast upon the subject 
of a road over the Sierra Nevada range, and his lore 
gained from some twenty surveys of that snowy divide 
fascinated his audience. 

The Central was fortunate to get him. He knew 
the California mountains thoroughly ; he knew Wash- 
ington, also, and its legislative methods—had already 
been there several times in the interests of California 
railroad schemes which would secure land grants from 
the Government. He was of engaging personality, and 
of utter, even boyish honesty. Following his trip to 
Washington, after the railroad convention of 1859 at 
San Francisco, he had submitted a charge of only $40, 
for printing, out of a total expense of $2500. 

46 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


A cash fund of $35,000, supplied by the few initial 
stockholders, kept Judah in the field for the Central 
until fall. On date of October 1 he made his final 
report upon routes. 

The “ Dutch Flat” route, the continuation of the 
popular emigrant and Forty-niner trail from the Platte | 
and the Salt Lake, up the Truckee and in by way of | 
Donner Pass over the Sierra, was his recommendation. | 

This demanded an ascent of 7000 feet in not more. 
than seventy miles. But he had found a long unbroken | 
spur extending from Donner down along the north side 
of the American River into the Sacramento Valley. 
Its maximum grade would not exceed 105 feet to the 
mile; there were no mountain rivers nor canyons to | 
cross, except a small tributary of the Bear River a short 
distance above Dutch Flat. 

The eastern slope might be descended by two con- 
venient ravines on the south side of the tragic Donner 
Lake—tragic by reason of the Donner party catastrophe 
amidst the snows of 1846-1847. Truckee River on the 
other side might be reached, at eleven miles from the 
summit, by grades not greater than those of the west 
slope. The passage of the Truckee through the eastern 
summit ridge or secondary ridge of the Sierra offered 
a practicable exit by a 40 per cent. grade to the Truckee 
Meadows and the Big Bend in the Desert of the Hum- 
boldt, Nevada. 

The distance from Sacramento to the Truckee was 
only 123 miles; to the State line, only 140 or 145 miles. 

47 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


His report estimated eighteen tunnels, most of them — 
over 1000 feet long but none over 1400 feet long, and © 
all in granite rock, that called for little timbering. He © 
foresaw no snow trouble. The route was chiefly “ side 


hill line,” on the flanks of slopes where snow slid off © 
or might be removed. By the testimony of the moss-_ 
line on the trees, and of mountaineers, the greatest 

depth of undrifted snow on the summit was about thir- — 
teen feet ; but if snow-plows were set at work after each — 
storm the road could be kept open all winter. The snow) 
in any quantity was confined to a stretch of about fifty- 3 
five miles—from Dutch Flat, forty miles west from the | 


summit, to a point less than half that distance east from 
the summit. 


His cost estimate, from Sacramento to the eastern) | 

boundary of the State, 140 miles, summed up about) - 
. . i 

$12,500,000, or a little over $89,000 a mile. Construc- 


tion near the summit would run to $150,000 a mile, | 


whereas the initial construction out of Sacramento _ 
would call for only about $50,000 a mile. 

This Dutch Flat or Donner Lake route was ap- 
proved. President Stanford rehearsed that when he 
and the other members of the official examining party 
stood at the proposed pass here ; looked at the lake, 1200 
feet below, and at the cliffs, still 2000 feet above; 
realizing as they did that their railroad would have to 
make an elevation of 7000 feet in 103 miles, they agreed 
that could a steamship around Cape Horn either from 


San Francisco or New York “ get in back there” with 
48 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


its goods, they could not build the road and meet with 
the competition. 

But the feat being impossible, and the only compe- 
tition being that by ox-team and mule-team, “as the 
laws of the State of California allowed 15 cents a ton 
per mile, we concluded we would build it.’’ With his 
maps and estimates Judah, accompanied by Secretary 
Bailey, his long-time acquaintance, officially proceeded 
to Washington, earning there the success such as has 
been narrated in the foregoing chapter. 

He filed his company map with the Secretary of the 
Interior, that the public lands as designated might be 
withdrawn from entry; and on July 21 took the steamer 
for his long voyage home again, bearing with him a tes- 
timonial from Congress thanking him for his National 
service. Theodore Judah, now vaguely remembered, 
was the tutelary genius of the Pacific Railway. 

In his report of October to the company he urged 
the extension of the surveys as far as Salt Lake, and 
advised undertaking at least 300 miles of road beyond 
the California boundary. | 

When he directed attention to the probable financial 
benefits that but awaited the extension, he broke no 
news to Messrs. Stanford, Huntington, etal. The prime! 
inducement for building through on a line as short 
and direct as feasible lay in the shining prize offered by 
the Nevada silver mines. The fabulous Comstock vein 
had been uncovered, Virginia City had been baptized 
_ with a bottle of whisky, the Washoe excitement (im- 
4 49 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


mortalized by the ubiquitous Ross Browne, assayer and - 
peripatetic journalist whose sketches rival those of 
“Roughing It”) had scarcely simmered down; the 
Nevada “ Silverado” was eclipsing the California El 
Dorado, and the California stage lines, the Wells-Fargo 
Express, and an army of freighters were doing a 
plethoric business between Placerville on the Sacra- 
mento Valley side and Virginia on the Nevada side. 
To shunt this business, or part of it, into Sacramento 
by rail promised a revenue for the Central of $5,000,000 
a year in the midst of its building program. 

The Central’s acceptance of the Act of 1862 was 
filed with the Interior Department on December 1, this 
year. On December 27 the provisional construction 
firm of C. Crocker & Co. was granted the contract for 
the grading, masonry, bridges and track of eighteen 
miles of road out from Sacramento. Crocker divided 
the distance into eighteen sections and sublet them. 

“ Breaking of ground” took place at Sacramento 
January 8, 1863, a year almost to a day after the in- 
auguration of Governor Stanford. Now as president 
and governor he wielded the first spade on the Pacific 
Railway, when before State and local officials and a 
throng of other spectators, at K Street, the levee ter- 
minus, he ladled some earth from a dump-cart into a 
mud-hole that marked end o’ track in the West. There 
were cheers and speeches. 

The company early had decided that President Stan- 
ford should attend to State legislation in support of 

50 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


the road ; that Vice-President Huntington should be the 
financial agent in the East and look out for additional 
National legislation; and that Charles Crocker and 
Treasurer Mark Hopkins should manage the business 
end. The assignments could not have been improved. 

Forty miles of track, including some difficult and 
expensive work amidst the foothills, must be com- 
pleted before the company might draw upon the Gov- 
ernment bond and land subsidies. The members had 
not entered upon this thing through philanthropic or 
wholly patriotic motives. It had an element of ro- 
mance, but not the luster attached by the Congressional 
debates to the more widely appealing Union Pacific. 

The members were hard-headed business men, in- 
ured to making their own way. In California they had 
seen many a golden dream shattered, and many a large 
stake won through sheer daring. The alert and 
resourceful there gained; the sluggard lost. 

It is said that they were poor, in comparison with 
' their wealthy peers and in the light of their great under- 
taking. Possibly so. It is said that they were well- 
to-do, were their assets rightly computed. Again, 
possibly so. 

They all were in “ going” and long-established en- | 
terprises which did not conflict the one with another. | 
By testimony of Huntington before the investigating 
commissions of Congress, Crocker’s dry-goods house _ 
was very prosperous. Crocker said that he himself, 
was worth over $200,000. The Stanford brothers | 

SI 


j 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


(groceries and provisions) were worth “several mil 

lions.” The Huntington firm had been capitalized in 
1855 with $400,000; he swore that when alone in the 
hardware and metal trade, in eight months of 1854 he! 
had cleared $854,000. In 1861 the firm had credit stand- | 


- 


ing of a million. Sacramento was a thriving centre, 


‘ 

' 
t 
t 


second only to San Francisco. 

Opposing this statement, there should be set the - 
memorial to Congress at the time when the company 
was organized, to the effect that the Stanford brothers 
were worth $33,000; Huntington, $7000; Hopkins, 
$9700; Huntington and Hopkins, $34,000; Charles — 
Crocker, $25,000. 

A San Francisco petition to Congress rated the 
company, in its beginnings, at less than $250,000. 

There was method in all these statements. A 
medium might be struck. 

Engineer Judah estimated the prospective cost of 
the first fifty miles at $3,250,000, or an average of 
$65,000 per mile, exclusive of rolling stock. By the 
laws of California, embodied in the charter, ten shares, 
or $1000, a mile must be subscribed on the line across 
the State, figured at 138 miles, before the road might be 
commenced. Of this amount, Io per cent., or $10 a 
share, must be paid down; assessments should be made 
at $5 a share during the course of construction. 

The initial sale of the capital shares in California 
was meagre, but sufficient to meet the law—1580 out 
of the total 85,000 being subscribed for by the company 

52 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


officers and a few friends. War conditions were ren- 
dering money dear and investors cautious. San Fran- 
cisco citizens rewarded an all-day session with open 
subscription books by taking one block of ten shares! 

The company had no notion of advancing from its 
members’ private funds until absolutely necessitated. 
Available on paper there was at most only $158,000; a 
portion of it, $125,000, in the treasury, and the entire 
amount merely a bagatelle in building a railroad. David 
O. Mills, already a wealthy man and soon to help found 
the great Bank of California, declined to ally himself; 
so did other San Franciscans who commanded large 
capital. Huntington applied to his Eastern acquaint-\ 
ances, of whom he had a flattering number in financial | 
circles. It was better to borrow, if needs be, there than 
in California at 2 per cent. a month. 

Henceforth he spent the major portion of his time 
in the East; a month at New York, then ten days in 
California, then back again; to and fro, to and fro, by 
stage, and eventually by stage and rail together, 6000 
miles of toilsome round trip. 

He knew men such as Moses Taylor, William E. 
Dodge, William R. Garrison and father, the wealthy 
philanthropist, steamship magnate, and one-time San 
Francisco’s mayor practically by acclamation, Commo- 
dore C. K. Garrison. But they and other commercial 
leaders in New York and Boston refused to take a 
substantial interest, even in the company bonds, alleg- 
ing that the risk was. high, the profits remote; until— 

53 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


“ Huntington, we do not want to go into it; but if 
you will guarantee the interest on these bonds for ten 
years we will take them.” 

And Huntington replied, in his abrupt way: 

“T will guarantee them, because if the Central 
Pacific ever stops short of completion C.-P. Huntington 
will be so badly broken that you will never spend any © 
time picking him up.” 

At the outset, by pledging the credit of himself and 
his associates to the amount of $250,000 he was en- 
abled to contract for the delivery, upon schedule time, 
of the iron and other equipment for building and oper- 
ating fifty miles of road. Eventually he gained the day | 
for the company’s Government bonds by enlisting the 
young brokers and bankers, Fisk and Hatch, who spe- | 
cialized in such securities. They acted as the Central 
Pacific’s financial agents in the East, took paper and re- 
turned gold—and when they failed in 1874 owed the 
company over $830,000. But their vigorous backing as 
the godfathers of the company in its childhood more 
than offset their defection in its manhood. 

There came a time when Vice-President Hunting+ 
ton and the other company individuals were upon prom-, 
issory paper to the extent of $1,250,000. However, 
the case first in evidence, when he obtained the wished- 
for material from Eastern manufacturers, is a salient 
example of the value of business integrity. 

In July, 1863, Engineer Judah was pleased to report 
that 6000 tons, or sixty miles, of rails had been pur- 

54 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


chased, to be delivered 500 tons a month, including 
also the spikes and chairs (fish-plate fastenings were 
adopted afterward) for the sixty miles. There had been 
engaged six locomotives, six first-class passenger cars, 
two baggage cars, twenty-five flat cars, fifteen box-cars, 
and frogs, switches, turntables and other appliances 
for the fifty miles. 

At this time the bridge across the American River 
was almost completed. The greater portion of the 
eighteen miles had been graded and was waiting for 
the rails. 

In October Judah started for the East, to reinforce 
Huntington. He died from a fever upon his arrival 
in New York. Samuel S. Montague, his assistant, suc- 
ceeded him as chief engineer, with George E. Gray as 
consulting engineer, and the work was done well. 

Although the Central was a California enterprise, 
the fact early became apparent that little moral help | 
could be expected from the California people. The sec- 
tional and personal fight in opposition to the road du- 
plicated, on a smaller scale, the opposition that retarded 
the Pacific Railroad projects through the Fifties. 

Almost at once the San Francisco press, subsidized 
by business interests jealous of Sacramento, and by 
other interests with their own irons already in the fire, 
tried hard to kill it by adverse comment. ; 

The Wells-Fargo Express Company, now under its 
able president, Louis McLane, waxing to be a power 
in California and Nevada, and controlling the main 

55 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


traffic between, foresaw serious competition in carry-) 

ing; and although President McLane was upon the || 

board of commissioners appointed for the Union Pacific | 
\ 


ents Se 


Railroad he felt bound to serve his company. 

The California Stage Company and enlisted trans- — 
port lines, that rendered Sacramento one-of the busiest ; 
stage centres in the world and formed the connections 
with the Nevada silver mines and the Overland busi- 
ness out of Salt Lake, viewed the Central as a dis- 
- tinctly dangerous rival. The Pioneer Stage road — 
between Virginia City and Placerville was a lucra- © 
tive toll road, bringing its owners $693,000 in 1862. | 

The Overland Stage across country from the Mis- — 
souri to California saw itself doomed by the Pacific — 
Railway agitation; and although Ben Holladay had © 
subscribed for twenty shares of Union Pacific stock— 
a tentative investment of $20,000—he would have been 
willing to lose the full amount if that might have halted 
the march of events which threatened his Government 
contract of $1,800,000 a year. 

The great Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which 
cared for the Isthmus traffic, and the California Steam 
Navigation Company, that plied on San Francisco Bay 
and the Sacramento River, of course joined the ranks — 
of the opposition: the one combating the transconti- 
nental short-cut, the other fearing the entry of the 
rails into San Francisco. ; 

The Overland Telegraph, whose Pacific companies 


had perfected their service between Placerville and 
56 


—" 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


/ Salt Lake City, could not be counted upon as wel- 
; coming those wires upon which Government and com- 
» mercial messages would be sent. 

A host of freight contractors, large and small, and 
their more than 10,000 employes in plains, mountains 
and deserts, bristled belligerent. The Sitka Ice Com-| 
pany, supplying ice to consumers at five cents a pound, 
tossed a monopolistic hat into the ring. . 

The “Dutch Flat and Donner Lake route” was 
given a bad name. Out of a doubt real or pretended 
that the company ever would be able to finance a road 
across the Sierra, the project was dubbed the “ Dutch 
Flat Swindle.” 

Even the personal friends of the company wavered 
at the constantly impinging assertion “the road will 
end high in the air and nowhere else.”” Huntington, 
Stanford—they all were earnestly warned, “ You will 
bury your whole fortune in the snow of the Sierra.” 
Vice-President Huntington testified before Congress 
that the mercantile credit of himself and his colleagues 
was seriously impaired by their connection with the 
so-called crazy venture. 

Outside of San Francisco the bitterest fight was’ 
waged by Placerville and its allies. From a decadent 
mining camp Placerville had grown to be a prosperous, — 
bustling mart upon the Nevada-California highway for 
the rumbling six-horse Concords, the long pack-trains, 
the toiling foot-travelers, and all that steady traffic 
between mines and market—a traffic that in 1863 

57 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


amounted to $13,000,000. The Dutch Flat route of | 
the Central left Placerville at one side; and by bidding 
for the traffic would relegate the old town back to the | 
“ has-beens.”” 

Nevada tilted a lance or two. Its legislature, to 
hurry matters, hung up a prize of $3,000,000 in bonds 
for the first railroad that should connect the Territory 
with the navigable waters of California. 

President Stanford hastened over and pleaded that 
the donation should be made to the Central. The 
clause was finally killed ; but soon thereafter, when the 
Central had completed only thirty miles, Nevada again 
interfered, in favor of the new San Francisco and 
Washoe, whose track, now thirty-eight miles in length, 
was to pass from the Sacramento’s head of navigation 
through Placerville and onward to present Reno. 

The first legislature of the new State of Nevada 
memorialized Congress to grant $10,000,000 in bonds 
to the initial railroad from the Sacramento to the east- 
ern base of the Sierra; and appointed a senate commit- 
tee to get reports upon the prospects of the various 
companies in the field. 

The engineer of the opposition to the Central 
promptly belabored that company with an astonishing 
array of allegations—to the extent that out of his own 
surveys he knew the projected route to be impossible; 
that Judah had known this, had resigned in conse- 
quence, and accepted $100,000 first mortgage bonds to 
keep silence; that the company dared not make public 

58 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


its location line to the summit—that it had no intention 
of entering Nevada and would stop when it had diverted 
traffic by a cut-off wagon road to the mines. 

The report was so extravagant that it defeated it- 
self. Nevada became too busy to pay further attention 
to the imbroglio. Congress declined to place eggs in 
still another basket. The C. P. was building on, now| 
with ample resources; and although launched with a | 
chorus of acclaim and promises, the San Francisco and 
Washoe fell by the way. 

Despite the hue and cry of fraud, under Republican 
auspices and the exigencies of the war California State 
legislation had been satisfactorily engineered. By acts 
of 1863 and 1864 the State and various counties were 
authorized to exchange bonds for company stock to 
the sum, all told, of $1,650,000, much of it payable 
at once; the company was authorized to issue bonds 
in $12,000,000 at 7 per cent., secured by mortgage, 
the interest on the first $1,500,000 to be borne by the 
State treasury. 

The San Francisco city and county subscription of 
$600,000 was held up for several years, and finally was 
discounted only after much litigation; for San Fran- 
cisco seemed to be implacable. But the remainder of 
the local subsidies was delivered. 

June 1, 1863, the company books showed total stock | 
subscriptions of 7115 shares, with $210,930 paid in. | 
The vast majority of the stockholders were of Sacra-| 
mento; San Francisco had doled out two subscriptions ;) 

59 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


but all were of California, and the first thirty miles of . 
the Central Pacific were built with California money 
stretched out by the personal efforts of Vice-President. 
Huntington in the East. Stanford testified that for 
one period of seventeen days there was not a cent in 
the treasury. vk SE 
The light ahead rapidly broadened into day. 
._Fortune certainly favored the bold. At the outset there 
had been a vexation—an added straw—when Congress 
changed the gauge of track in defiance of President 
Lincoln’s decision. Upon the harassed, busy Lincoln 
the Act of 1862 had imposed this question of gauge to 
be uniform from river to ocean, Lines already estab- 
lished were using gauges ranging from seven feet down 
to the four feet eight and one-half inches which was 
being adopted as “standard” gauge by the New York 
Central, the Michigan Central, Baltimore and Ohio, 
the Chicago and Northwestern and the Rock Island. 
The California railroad charters required the gauge 
of five feet. Ata cabinet meeting during the week pre- 
ceding January 24, 1863, the gauge of the Pacific 
Railroad was discussed with Vice-President Hunting- 
ton and other alert Californians. The cabinet itself, 
says the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, was 
almost unanimous in favor of the standard gauge— 
arguing that to reduce width of track was less expen- 
sive than to increase it; but swayed by perhaps the 
California necessities as represented to him, at any rate 


informed that.a large amount of material had already 
60 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


-been ordered for the five-foot gauge, the President 
obligingly issued his dictum: five feet. 

Whereupon, moved in turn by protests of the East- 
ern interests, and particularly of those roads then build- 
ing toward the Missouri for connection with the trans- 
continental line, in resolution of February and March 
the Senate and House declared; “‘ That the gauge of the 
Pacific Railroad and its branches throughout the whole 
extent, from the Pacific coast to the Missouri River, 
shall be, and herein is, established at four feet eight and 
one-half inches.” 

This was the first defeat for the Californians, but it 
was amply made up to them in succeeding legislation. 

Aided by the Union Pacific force of lobbyists, Vice- 
President Huntington of the Central and his lieuten- 
ants were working, as they well knew how to work, for 
a betterment of the Act of 1862. 

There were good arguments: That the first mort- 
gage lien by the Government barred other investors and 
militated against the company bonds; that the Govern- 
ment currency bonds, in war time, needs must be sold 
at 10 per cent. discount ; that the intrinsic worth of the 
California lands was greater on paper than in the real- 
ity; that none of the lands had value until the tracks 
were in and the country opened; that the price of labor 
and material had soared; that gold, the standard on the 
coast, was at a premium of 30 and 40 per cent., and 
that currency and securities had depreciated; that the, 


Union Pacific had not turned an inch of earth, and, 
61 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


would rather forfeit its charter than plunge ahead into 
financial disaster. And there was the specious argu- 
ment that unless the Pacific Railroad was pushed, Cali- 
fornia might be lost to the Flag. 

The pages of the Congressional Globe tell vivid 
stories of this fight, waged day and night, by the 
railroad lobbyists and their host of crumb-seeking 
hangers-on, in the corridors and upon the floors of Con- 
gress. The majority claimed in print that the final bill 
was not the bill as recommended by the Senate and 
House committees, but was a cleverly palmed substi- 
tute, rushed to adoption without a reading, without a 
teller to appraise the ayes and noes, and thus foisted, 
like a changeling, upon the people. 

Nevertheless, subsequent testimony would show that 
in approving the munificence of the new act the Na- 
tional law-makers and the President were carried along 
upon the crest of an honest desire to provide for the 
Pacific Railway, at the outset, a “‘ strong corporation ” 
that should “be able to withstand the loss of business 
and other casualties incident to war and still to perform 
for the Government such reasonable service as might 
under such circumstances be demanded.” 

“Tt was the purpose of Congress in all this to pro- 
vide for something more than a mere gift of so much 
land, and a loan of so many bonds on the one side, and 
the construction and equipment of so many miles of 
railroad and telegraph on the other.” 


The young giant was to be started out insured 
62 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


against failure; and there were those who affirmed that 
if the Government never got back a cent from its ad- 
vancement in bonds and lands, like a good father it 
should gaze proudly upon its living investment. 

The Act of 1864, passed by both Houses in June 
and signed by President Lincoln on July 2, became a 
fact. Perhaps it was upon this occasion that the Hunt- 
ington succinct dispatch flashed across the continent: 

“We have drawn the elephant ; now let us see if we 
can harness him.” 

By this act, amending the Act of 1862, the land. 
grants were increased to ten sections per mile, within 
twenty miles on either side of the tracks—doubling the 
area to 12,800 acres a mile. 

Vastly more important to the roads, however, was a 
new provision that authorized the companies to issue 
their own bonds in amounts equal to the Government 
bonds (both to be released on the completion of twenty 
instead of forty miles of road) ; and these bonds should 
be secured by first liens upon the roads, thereby sub- 
merging the Government bonds into second mortgages. 

Of only less importance was the provision that au- 
thorized the issuance of the Government $32,000 and 
$48,000 bonds in amounts of two-thirds the total when 
any twenty miles of road between the eastern base of 
the Rocky Mountains and the western base of the 
Sierra Nevada had been prepared for the track. The 
remaining one-third should be paid upon approval of 


the completed twenty miles. But this advance should 
63 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


not apply to the Union Pacific west of Salt Lake 
on more than 300 miles beyond the fully completed 
continuous track. 

The time limit in which the first stretches must be 
completed was extended one year. The Central was re- 
quired to build only 25 miles a year thereafter, and was 
given four years in which to reach the State border. 

Right of way was reduced from 200 to 100 feet on 
either side of the tracks, but private property might 
be condemned for the purpose. Coal and iron might 
be taken from land otherwise exempted as mineral 
lands. Transportation and telegraph service for the 
Government should be paid for one-half in cash, one-| 
half by credit upon the bond loan. 

The two companies might unite in all road build- 
ing; the failure of one company to meet the conditions 
should not invalidate the other; the Central Pacific 
might build 150 miles east of the California border in 
order to meet the Union Pacific. 

Three Government inspecting commissioners 
should be appointed for each road, and five Government 
directors should serve upon the Union Pacific board— 
“visit all portions of the line,” sit in the meetings, and 
from time to time report to the Secretary of the Interior. 

The Union Pacific capital stock was placed at - 
1,000,000 shares of $100 each, instead of 100,000 of 
$1000 each; the books should be kept open until all the 
stock had been subscribed. 

It was an extraordinarily generous act. Under its 

64 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


patronage the two companies might move onward con- 

tent—and particularly the Central, to whom the only | 
obnoxious provision was that limiting its extra growth | 
to the 150 miles. But as for this— | 

“T said to Mr. Union Pacific, when I saw it, I 
would take that out as soon as I wanted it out,” Mr. 
Huntington affirmed. 

So he did, in 1866—“ without,” he said, ‘“‘ the use 
of one dollar.” 

When the Act of 1864 arrived like a legacy, the Cen- 
tral had built only to Newcastle, thirty-one miles; the 
eighteen months since the letting of the first construc- 
tion contract had been a struggle of nerve against time; 
but now the company, working in great harmony and 
with infinite skill, saw the open way through the physi- 
cal obstacles that loomed before. 

It had a land grant of 12,800 acres per mile. It had 
a creation of marketable bonds in sums of $96,000, 
$64,000 and $32,000 per mile, besides the State and 
county subsidies. Public sentiment, which, nowhere’ 
more strongly than in California, desired the Pacific, 
Railroad, swung to it when its success was assured. 

From the moment that the scrawl of Abraham Lin- 
coln made the Act of 1864 a law the Central’s future 
was assured, Picks and spades of the grading crews up- 
turned golden soil, and the company found itself con- 
fronted with the pleasing question “‘ how to dispose of 
the vast sums beginning to flow in on every side.” 

Again aid came from President Lincoln, who sought 

5 65 


~ BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


to favor the Central no more than the Union, but who 
was amenable to every project that promoted the course 
of the Pacific Railroad. 

In this is seen the fine Italian hand of Congressman 
Aaron Sargent, who as a good angel had accompanied 
Theodore Judah around the Isthmus in 1861, and who 
served long in State and Government duties. 

By decision of the California Supreme Court the 
Sierra. western foothills terminated thirty-one miles 
from Sacramento; but with a bonus of $96,000 a mile 
for 150 miles of mountain work, the Central Company 
naturally was anxious for the first foothills to begin 
as low and as level and as soon as possible. 

In the gloomy winter of late 1864 the President 
had to cast off for the moment his burden of dark war 
and transfer his thought to a foreign field—moreover, 
to a region that he had never seen. Where did the 
Sierra Nevada Mountains start, east of Sacramento, 
on the line of the Central Pacific Railroad? 

Thousands of dollars were at stake; his only re- 
course was geological maps and the advices of experts, 
and of well-wishers biased in one direction or the other. 

Congressman Sargent is said to have proved by a 
map of his own that the reddish soil of the slopes and 
the black soil of the valley met seven miles northeast 
of Sacramento. But let it be admitted that the map 
was drawn by authority; for the company had been 
supplied with letters from State Geologist Joseph 


Dwight Whitney, of illustrious name; from the United 
66 


CENTRAL PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


States surveyor-general for California, Edward Fitz- 
gerald Beale, likewise unimpeachable; from J. F. 
Houghton, the State surveyor-general: all agreed upon 
the one initial point—the crossing of Arcade Creek. 
Forthwith the bothered National executive so de- 
creed, in all good faith. By date of January 12, 1864, 
he issued the dictum: 


“the point where the 


line of the Central Pacific Railroad crosses Arcade. 


Creek in the Sacramento Valley is hereby fixed as the 
western base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.” 


Thus by a stroke of the pen the base of the Sierra | 


} 


was moved twenty-four miles westward; and for con- | 


. ; 
struction across an easy-rolling country the Central re- | 


ceived the Government top bonus of $48,000 a mile and | 


was authorized to market its bonds in same amount. 

Even under these extended limits the 150 miles 
carried the work over the actual mountain portion and 
down into Nevada; but the desert portion beyond 
proved no sinecure at the $32,000 a mile. 

The Central seemed to have grasped fortune by the 
forelock, and did not loosen its hold. 

In September the company treasury contained 
$7000 in cash and the books showed only trivial indebt- 
edness. The first eighteen miles were more formidable 
than expected, owing to riprapping the grade along the 
unruly American River and the expense of a bridge 
across that stream; the sledding onward to Newcastle 
taxed the abilities of the engineers to obtain easy grades 


and curves while making distance among the foothills. 
67 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Beyond Newcastle the company virtually did its own 
building, forming from its membership two construc- 
tion firms and applying the profit, if any. Presently 
it had capital, either through its stock and its hypothe- 
cated securities or regularly earned. 

It laid a wagon road from Dutch Flat, west of the 
summit, across to Carson Valley of the Nevada mining 
district ; and by this road, which aroused accusations in 
press and on street corner that Dutch Flat was to be 
the terminus, traffic was attracted to the rails. 

The company began to buy in its outstanding stock 
—realizing the steady glow of the future. It triumphed’ 
over all opposition, physical and sentimental. By Gov- 
ernment consent it assigned its subsidy rights to the 
Western Pacific Railroad, in order to utilize that now 
building line as its branch from Sacramento to San 
Francisco. It was due to be called the “ great absorber.” 

When one surveys the careful yet bold handling 
of their every resource by this little group of men, each 
of whom had made his own way up from a restricted 
boyhood, there can be no wonder that wealth inevitably 
amassed for them—that vast railroad projects gravi- 
tated to them; that Charles Crocker, who had started 
from home with a cotton shirt, a linen “ dickey,” a pair 
of socks, and all his other possessions wrapped in a 
‘handkerchief, should write his check for a million; that 
the names of Stanford and Huntington are golden, and 
that the latter eventually rode from the Pacific to the 
Atlantic in his private car over his own lines. 


III 
Union Paciric MEN anp METHODS 


THE title “ Union Pacific ” would seem to admit of 
little controversy. Before the passage of the act adopt- 
ing the name a bill by Senator Curtis of lowa is said 
to have ] proposed it; and during the pre-war debates 
upon the Pacific Railroad Senator Wilson of Massa- 
chttsétts applied the stigma “ dis-union route” to the 
southern | survey. 

~The act authorizing a road that should meet the 
California road was passed at a time when the word 
“Union” was doubly significant. However, the claim 
has been advanced by one or two historians that the 
title was based not upon a union of country, but upon 
the proposed union of branch lines which, issuing fan- 
shape from the Missouri River, should join at the tooth 
meridian, to proceed on as the single main line. 

The argument is too prosaic to be popular; and too 
haphazard to be tenable. 

As an institution the Union Pacific Railroad radi- 
cally differed from the Central Pacific Railroad. The 
Central was organized under a State charter, to build in 
California; it was_a private company, and as such it’ 
had appealed to the Government for aid. Supervision 
by the United States was exercised to protect the Gov-, 
ernment’s security for the loan. But by accepting the. 


provisions of the act which governed the loan, and as a 
69 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


common carrier when it extended across the State line, 
the Central obviously came under the provinces of 
National legislation. 

The Union Pacific was Government born and was 
national in its machinery. It operated by a Federal 
charter, based upon that clause in the Constitution (ap- 
plying to the Central also) which directed the Govern- 
ment “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and 
among the several States and Indian tribes, to establish 
_ post-offices and post-roads,” to organize the army, and 
| so forth. Through its Government directors it was 
answerable to the Secretary of the Interior in same 
measure that through its other directors it was answer- 
able to its stockholders. Its route as projected lay 
entirely through Territories, where the Federal rights 
were supreme. 

Out of all the men who formed the directorate and 
the executive staffs of the Union Pacific some eight 
eventually bore the brunt of battle through to the meet- 
ing of the rails at Prone Point. 

These were 2s Ames and Oliver Ames, of 
Boston; Dr. Thomas C. Durant, of New York City; 
John | Duff, of Boston; Sidney’ Dillon, of New York 
City ; Bae Jottn Stevens (“ Jack”) Casement and 
Dan T. Casement, of Ohio, but with headquarters at 
Omaha; and General Grefiville M. Dodge, of Council 
Bluffs, Iowa. 

The Ames brothers, Oakes and Oliver, were shovel 
and tool manufacturers at Easton, Massachusetts— 

70 


COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON CHARLES CROCKER 
Vice-President Central Pacific R. R. Supt. Construction Central Pacific 


From Paintings in Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento 


GENERAL “JACK” CASEMENT OAKES AMES 


Champion _track-layer or the Who spent his all in aiding the 
Continent Union Pacific 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


they having taken over the business, one of the oldest 
in New England, from their father in 1844. It was 
thereafter conducted under the firm title of Oliver 
Ames and Sons. The announcement of gold in Cali-' 
fornia in 1849 and the resultant opening of the trans- 
Missouri country by the feverish emigrants vastly 
stimulated the company’s business, so that its output 
increased by leaps and bounds. The product of the 
factory was backed by the inherent honesty of the 
methods employed. As Henry B. Blackwell ‘said, at 
the dedication of the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall, 1881: 
“T remember a good many ups and downs in the cur- 
rency of the country, but there is one thing which has 
known no ups and downs since that time [forty years. 
back]; for then, as now, the Ames shovel was legal’ 
tender in every part of the Mississippi Valley.” And as 
a Boston merchant related, among all the natives, no 
matter how ignorant nor how frequently defrauded 
by poor goods, in South Africa, he found none who 
didn’t have and appreciate Ames’s shovels. 

Oakes Ames, the senior brother, at the outbreak of 
the Rebellion was a member of War Governor An- 
drew’s cabinet, in Massachusetts, as Republican Coun- 
cillor from the Bristol District. He was fifty-eight 
years old when from his Councillorship he was sent by 
popular vote to the House of the Thirty-eighth Con- 
gress, where he became a member of the committee on 
railroads and helped to draft the various measures that 
culminated in the Act of 1862. He was passing his 

71 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


sixtieth year when in 1865 President Lincoln first per- 
sonally requested him to assist in tiding, by material 
means, the Union Pacific over its rocky way. 

The building of the Pacific Railway naturally 
opened another promising trade avenue for the Ames 
factory. The Old Colony brand of shovels dug the 
Union Pacific grade. But there is nothing to show that, 
this prospect influenced the Ames brothers beyond ordi-, 
nary business prudence, or swayed them to any misuse 
of their financial connections. Oakes Ames was now 
a man of wealth, of unchallenged integrity and un- 
doubted patriotism. He responded to President Lin- 
coln’s appeal by investing $1,000,000, raising an addi- 
tional million and a half and putting all the resources 
of the factory at the road’s disposal, on whatever terms. 
He pledged his credit to the danger point. Like Charles 
Crocker, his heart was in the work. While still con- 
gressman, in 1873 he was censured by the House in- 
vestigating committee for alleged improper distribution 
of finance stock among the National legislators. Ten 
weeks after, he died, a worn-out, broken man. 

He left to his son, Oliver (in 1887 governor of 
Massachusetts), a factory encumbered by staggering 
debts incurred on behalf of the railroad. These were 
cleaned up to the last dollar; and, of even greater satis- 
faction to the name of Ames, the father’s public record 
was vindicated by time and by resolution of the Massa- 
chusetts legislature. 

Oliver Ames, the brother, silent partner in the 

72 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


manufactory, was the president of the Union Pacific 
Company during its closing construction career. He 
and Oakes portrayed the sound New England type of 
American citizen: shrewd, vigorous, substantial, con- 
servative, and hanging on to the last inch when once 
they got their teeth set. “Stand by the company and 
let the Ameses take care of themselves,” Oakes Ames 
wrote to Chief Engineer Dodge—who adds: “‘ Nothing 
but the faith and pluck of the Ameses, fortified with 
their extensive credit . . . carried the thing 
through.” They might be termed the Big Two of 
the Union Pacific, as opposed to the full-blooded, 
perhaps more speculative Huntington and Stanford 
of the Central. 

Instead of Senator Benton’s Columbus, a massive 
monolith in shape of a stone pyramid, dedicated to the 
Ameses, was erected beside the Pacific Railway line, 
upon the highest point, Sherman Summit. 

Thomas C. Durant, a thorough railroad man, was 
the company’s vice-president in construction days, but 
upon him devolved the duties of president also. As 
general agent for the company in the East his work 
paralleled that of Huntington for the Central: to raise 
money, money, money, and to mould National legisla- 
tion. He had had practical experience in railroad 
building, when with Henry Farnam, of Chicago, he 
had engaged in the construction of the Mississippi and 
Missouri in Iowa; but by pledging the paper of the 
firm, Durant and Farnam, to cover certain ventures he 

‘Det oe ta oe 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


had badly involved his partner and had ruined the imme- 
diate onward progress of the road. He was of unlim- 
ited energy, aggressive spirit, and swift ambition; and 
the extravagant means which were employed in the 
expense accounts almost ruined him likewise. His rail- 
road career ended with the joining of the tracks. 

To the Casement brothers, General “ Jack” and 
Dan Casement, fell the immense supervising contract 
for laying the 1000 miles of track and for doing most 
of the grading beyond central Nebraska. The general, 
ranking as brevet brigadier, had performed valiant 
service with Ohio troops in the war. His fighting 
qualities were farther developed in the railroad work. 
There are many stories told of “ Jack” Casement—/ 
gritty, tireless, some five feet plus in stature and weigh- 
ing in proportion, but with the capacity of being as hard | 
as the hardest. He had all the driving power of Charles | 
Crocker, whom he opposed. 

His post was the front, in the construction camps 
at end o’ track, or in his car at the tail of the work 
train. His brother Dan, of similar mettle, attended 
mainly to forwarding the supplies from the last base. 

John Duff, of Boston, early a director, proved to 
be one of the loyal attachés whose interest in the com- 
pany was exceptionally keen. He accepted every oppor- 
tunity to make trips over the completed line, sent his 
son as a guest with Chief Engineer Dodge upon an ad- 
vance survey expedition clear to Salt Lake, and was 
honored by having his name registered in Duff’s Peak, 

74 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


north of Rawlins, Wyoming. In 1873-1874 he was 
ice-president of the company. 

Sidney Dillon, of New York, had teen a railroad 
man ever since his beginnings in 1834 as train boy upon 
_ the Albany and Schenectady Railway. He served the\ 

Union Pacific (a service, according to his testimony 
before the United States railroad commission, to which 
he devoted his best twenty years) as president of the 
construction company, and after construction days as 
president of the operating company itself. Born in 
1812, in the sixties he was a self-made man of brisk 
but courtly address, and of the English type with side- 
whiskers already turned white. 

If the Central Pacific had its Judah, the Union Pa- 

cific had its Dodge. Major General Grenville Mellen 

Dodge, engineer and soldier, was thirty-five when in | 
the spring of 1866 he became chief engineer of the 
Union Pacific Railroad; but for a dozen years he had 
been an enthusiast upon the topic of an iron trail from 
the Iowa border to the Salt Lake. 

He had graduated from the Norwich, Vermont, 
military and scientific academy ; had immediately gone 
into the Western country as surveyor under Peter A. 
Dey, in the field corps of the Chicago, Rock Island and 
Pacific (the Mississippi and Missouri Valley exten- 
sion), then planning to cross Iowa. His assignment 
carried him into the little-settled Platte Valley of 1853, 
beyond the Missouri. Before he was twenty-five, by| 
personal exploration and inquiry he had thoroughly | 

75 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


-mapped the region from present Omaha to the moun- . 
tains, was in position to recommend the later U. P. 
route up the Platte and over the Black Hills as that most 
feasible for a transcontinental line—and soon told — 
Abraham Lincoln all about it, in the Pacific House of 
young Council Bluffs. | 

Recalled from plains and mountains by the war,| 
he speedily rose to be corps commander under Sher- 
man before Atlanta, at thirty-three was major-general 
of volunteers, at thirty-four was in charge of the plains 
operations against, the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes, 
who were raiding overland travel; and after five years 
of fighting and engineering in the uniform was re-| 
leased from military duties, May 1866, to head the) 
surveying corps of the struggling Union Pacific. 

He was President Lincoln’s own selection at a criti- 
cal period. He brought to the office a high reputation 
for character and efficiency and an exact knowledge, 
fresh to the minute, of the northwest plains and moun- 
tain country. Moreover, he was inspiring, indomitable, 
devoted to his profession, well seasoned in spite of his 
moderate years, and devoted to the principles of his 
two professions. 

The good judgment with which he approved of the 
final surveys is demonstrated in the fact that when, 
thirty years after the completion of the road, the Harri- 
man management took charge, although millions of 
dollars were expended in attempts to rectify hasty 


grades and curves consequent upon the fast work and 
76 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


limited mechanical means of the early days, the whole 
distance from Omaha to Ogden, upwards of 1000 miles, 
was shortened by less than forty miles. 

Verily, those days of railroad building in the West 
seem to have been young-man days—though perhaps 
not more so than now. 

Colonel Silas Seymour, of New York, an expert in 
railroad construction, was appointed consulting engi- 
neer to Chief Dodge. They did not always agree, but 
Dodge usually was right. 

Among the division chiefs there were Samuel B. 
Reed, Thomas H. Bates, James A. Evans, F. M. Case, 
Percy T. Browne, L. L. Hills (these two killed by 
Indians), J. E. House, Marshall F. Hurd, F. C. Hodges, 
James R. Maxwell, John O’Neill, Francis Appleton, 
J. O. Hudnut, J. F. McCabe, Jacob Blickensderfer, Jr., 
and Thomas B. Morris. The field covered by the Union’ 
Pacific was much larger than that of the Central Pa- 
cific; 25,000 miles of exploratory trips, afoot and 
ahorse, were made, 15,000 miles of instrumental line | 
were run, throughout a strip 200 miles wide from the 
Missouri River to the California border. From this pio-| 
neer service for the Union Pacific many of the engineers 
stepped into post-graduate.work upon succeeding trans- 
continental roads. : 

Samuel Reed soon was taken from the field and | 
appointed superintendent of construction—a position | 
analogous to that of Strobridge for the Central. Major 
Hurd became his assistant. A number of these engi- 

77 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


neers, like young Hurd of Iowa, had won their spurs 
in the Civil War. Hurd himself had been upon General 
Dodge’s engineering staff as a private. Following the 
Union Pacific days, he and Superintendent Reed joined 
the location corps of the Canadian Pacific. 

David Van Lennep, of the New York School of 
Mines, was appointed geologist for the road, to ex- 
amine the country in advance, determine its resources 
of coal, building rock and ballast, and minerals. 

Of the Government commissioners who assiduously 
chased end o’ track in the “ Lincoln” car, approved of 
the completed sections, twenty and forty miles at a 
stretch, and on occasion helped to fight off the Indians, 
there were Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Simpson, U. S. 
Corps of Engineers, and an explorer in the great Utah 
basin himself; Major and Doctor William M. White, 
soldier and congressman; Major General Francis P. 
Blair, of Missouri, newspaper man and politician; 
Major General Samuel R. Curtis, the sterling lowan; 
Jacob Blickensderfer, Jr., the Ohio engineer; Major 
General G. K. Warren, of the army ; and others perhaps 
now less prominent in National annals. Among those 
for the Central Pacific, may it here be noted, there 
was F. F. Low, minister to China and in 1863 the suc- 
cessor to Leland Stanford as governor of California. | 

Of the Union Pacific Government directors who 
figured largely Jesse L. Williams, an authoritative engi- 
neer of Indiana, was the most active, not only fre- 


quently making, out of expert knowledge, separate re- 
78 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


ports upon the construction, but also in 1866 examining 
the experimental surveys in the Colorado Rockies. Con- 
gressman T. J. Carter, of Illinois, as director accom- 
panied General Dodge upon an inspection of the Black 
Hills and beyond at the time when Commissioner Blick- 
ensderfer, especially assigned by President Andrew 
Johnson, accompanied to determine the real eastern 
base of the Rocky Mountains. Congressman Charles 
T. Sherman, cousin of General Sherman and States- 
man John Sherman, likewise performed earnest service 
upon the Government board. 

Although the Government directors on the U. P. 
were laughed at by Huntington of the Central, who 
said that whenever they wished to “ go fishing” they 
took a car and went, for the stipend of their expenses 
and a small per diem they certainly put in a great deal 
of valuable time. Some of them did see new and inter- 
esting country; maybe fished. 

When calling the roll of the active aiders and abet- 
tors of the Union Pacific the name of Major General 
William T. Sherman should by no means be omitted. 
In the beginning rather skeptical of such a project’ 
(“ Let the railroad alone; it will cost so much money 
that it will break down any administration that adopts 
it as a party measure,” he had warned his senator 
brother; and in 1859: “ It will not receive enough net 
profits to pay interest on its cost”), the military needs. 
of quick transportation through the Indian country 
brought him to its full support. As General Dodge’s, 

79 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY > 


former corps commander and present zealous friend, 


and as commander of the Military Division of the Mis- 
sissippi through which the transcontinental would ex- 


tend, he instructed officers and men in all his western — 


departments to lend every possible aid to the protection 


of the surveys and track-building. In 1865 he sat om 


a nail-keg upon a flat-car of the first train to end 0”, 


track, fifteen miles. 

From General Grant, head of the army, down 
through Sherman, Sheridan, Crook, and all the uniform 
attached to plains and mountains duties, the Pacific 
Railway received generous assistance; “and it took a 
large stretch of authority to satisfy all our demands,” 
General Dodge remarks. 

“ What makes me hang on is the faith of you sol- 


diers,” Oakes Ames said to him in the darkest days of 


the construction period. 

By the Act of 1862 twenty-five of the 163 commis- 
sioners appointed from twenty-two States and three 
Territories constituted a quorum. On call by the Illi- 
nois members the board held its first meeting in Chicago, 
beginning with September 2, the same year. Former 
Senator Samuel R. Curtis, now a major general in 
the Federal army, occupied the chair. 

The act was accepted—the acceptance being filed 
in the Interior office the next June (1863), which was 
within the year limit. Henry B. Ogden, whose railroad 
career was well under way, was elected president of 
the Union Pacific Company; Thomas W. Olcott, of 

80 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


New York, treasurer; Henry V. Poor, of the Govern- 
ment appointees, secretary. 

Upon recommendation of Henry Farnam, Peter 
A. Dey, of Iowa City, Iowa, was selected to be the 
chief engineer. 

Mr. Dey, another of Iowa’s great men, distinguished 
not only in his younger days as a railroad engineer but 
in his later days as dean of the State railroad commis- 
sion, had been the chief engineer of the Chicago, Rock 
Island and Pacific extension projected and partly built 
by Messrs. Durant and Farnam; and he had been also 
the mentor of the younger Dodge, at this date serving 
the colors as a brigadier general. 

Pending the first annual meeting of the company, 
at which permanent organization should be effected 
by the election of officers and a board of directors, Engi- 
neer Dey was instructed to make reconnoissance for a 
route up the Platte Valley and across to Salt Lake. 

This he did; but at the meeting, held in New York 
City October 29 and 30, 1863, little substantial progress 
could be reported. To be sure, the Dey exploratory 
surveys had confirmed previous surveys, as run by the 
Dodge parties for the Rock Island line to the Rocky 
Mountains and beyond. However, of the 100,000. 
shares of capital stock, aggregating $100,000,000, only 
some 1500 had been subscribed—and these mainly as) 
a loyal effort upon the part of a few patriotic citizens 
who contemplated merely enabling the company to! 
meet the provisions of the act. 

6 81 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The belief of Congress and the faith of President 
Lincoln that the American public would rally to the 
support of a National road were proven to be fanciful. 
As in the case of the Central, war-time investors at 
large shied from the lure of a first mortgage covering, 
on the distance between the Missouri and California, 
a loan of $35,000,000 and interest at 6 per cent. ; and 
the prospective assets of 6,000,000 acres of lands, ih 
of them located in a so-called unproductive desert 
region, appealed no more than did the currency bonds. 

Indeed, the task before the Union—Paecific far 
dwarfed that before the Central, who had to build only 
fifty miles, difficult though they were, into waiting 
traffic, while the Union was to build 1500 miles, long 
stretches of what tapped no settlements whatever. 

There were the Colorado gold fields, the city of 
Denver, and the produce of the Salt Lake Valley, with, 
of course, the Pacific coast at the far end, as trade 
sources; but the whole Territory of Nebraska con- 
tained scarcely 35,000 people. From central Nebraska 
to the Salt Lake Valley the country was deemed a 
barren waste. Congressman John A. Rockwell’s report 
upon the Whitney scheme in 1849 had estimated that 
the annual upkeep of a Pacific Railroad would exceed 
$1,000,000; that there was no fuel en route, and that 
owing to the inconvenience of trans-shipment not a 
chest of tea would be sent over it from Canton. 

Samuel Bowles, the Spring field Republican man, for 


the year 1864 figured that the freighting traffic by 
82 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


wagon across the plains moved 40,000,000 pounds at 
an expenditure sufficient to provide a transcontinental 
railroad with receipts of $48,000 a mile. But the 
East had not yet awakened to this enormously growing 
plum from which the overland stage and freighting 
companies were taking generous bites. 

In the apparent consensus_of opinion, endorsed by 
Durant himself, the road never would pay ; it would be 
only a measure of Government utility. General Sher- 
man had named $200, 000,000 as the sum necessary to 
complete the line from river to coast—and the Cen- 
tral’s end was but 140 miles; the Chicago roads utterly 
declined to see any profit in taking over the Union 
Pacific ¢ contract, despite their Eastern connections. 

Fortunately, the young General Dodge had been 
summoned this spring of 1863 from his Military Dis- 
trict of Corinth to Washington for an interview with 
the President. Lincoln had remembered the talk at 
Council Bluffs in 1859. By the Act of 1862 he was 
empowered to fix the point for the Missouri River ter- 
minus. Now he relied upon the advice of Dodge, the 
boy surveyor from four years ago. 

Towns upon Iowa’s western border for a distance 
of 100 miles above and below the mouth of the Platte 
River were competing to secure the terminus. There 
really could be little question as to the proper location. 
T. J. Carter, one of the two Government directors (the 
other being Springer Harbaugh) had been reconnoiter- 
ing out of the little hamlet of Omaha for a good cross- 

83 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


ing of the Missouri, and had transmitted his recommen- 
dation to the President and the Secretary of the Interior. 
The Chicago railroads were focussing upon Council 
Bluffs, opposite Omaha; Council Bluffs was the logical 
juncture for the transcontinental route. In taking up his. 
residence at Council Bluffs, Dodge had foreseen this. | 

November, of this: year, the President issued his 
fiat (made more explicit by his proclamation of March, 
the next year) designating that portion of the western 
boundary of Iowa lying opposite the United States 
township of Omaha “as the point from which the line 
of railroad and telegraph in that section mentioned 
shall be constructed.” 

As yet, the terminus of the main line was to be the 
1ooth meridian, 247 miles into Nebraska. This was 
later changed. But the proclamation, and the matter 
of the bridge, brought on a long and acrimonious rivalry 
between the two towns, Omaha and Council Bluffs, for 
Union Pacific favors. 

Ambitious Omaha, suddenly on the up-grade, re- 
ferred to Council Bluffs as ‘‘ East Omaha,” “ Milk- 
ville” and “ lowa-town ”’ ; while the Bluffs, through all 
the construction years waiting to be connected up by a 
bridge and to get a rightful share of the terminal busi- 
ness, retorted with “ Bilkville,” “ Train-town” and 
“ That Union Pacific Depot across the river.” 

At the interview of General Dodge with President 
Lincoln the finances of the road were thoroughly dis- 


cussed. “‘ He was very anxious that the road should 
84 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


be built,” the general narrates—and adds that he him- 
self urged upon the President the necessity of Govern-, 
ment construction entirely. Private enterprise was not. 
equal to it. 

The careful Lincoln could only reply that to build | 
the railroad was beyond the Federal abilities at this 
time ; but that the Government would make any changes 
in the existing law, or extend any other reasonable aid 
calculated to enlist private capital. 

Dodge, who kept in close touch with the company 
affairs, snatched leave from his war duties personally 
to bear the President’s encouraging promise to the New 
York offices. 

At the meeting of the stockholders there, in Octo- 
ber, 1863, thirty directors were chosen, and officers 
elected in the persons of General John A. Dix, presi- 
dent; Thomas C. Durant, vice-president; Henry V. 
Poor, secretary; John J. Cisco, treasurer. 

This accomplished, the parent body of commission- 
ers automatically ceased to function. The ship Union 
Pacific had been launched. 

General Dix never filled the duties of his office. 
Veteran of the War of 1812, honored by several chairs 
of state in New York and one time the Free Soil candi- 
date for governor, as Secretary of the Treasury he had 
uttered his famous order, “‘ If any man attempts to haul 
down the American Flag, shoot him on the spot,” and 
now, at sixty-five, was major general commanding the 


Seventh Army Corps. 
85 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Vice-President Durant acted as chief executive be- 
sides being financial agent and business manager. At 
the last, in the words of Journalist Richardson, the 
New York Tribune traveller, “he from his quiet office 
in New York directs by telegraph the labors of twelve 
thousand men—an army which it requires generalship 
to handle, particularly when its commander must be 
paymaster as well.” 

The moneyed men of the East had not yet been con- 
vinced; no immediate aid seemed likely, except the 
cautious donations of $100 a share on shares whose par 
value was $1000. But, basing their plans upon the 
President’s reported attitude and a strong lobby to 
work in conjunction with a Central Pacific lobby, an- 
ticipating the resultant Act of 1864, the company in- 
structed Engineer Dey to run survey lines this fall on 
the route as endorsed by himself and his former sub- 
altern Dodge; to extend them up the Platte Valley, 
across the first range known as the Black Hills Range, 
and to the Wasatch Mountains of the Utah border. 

Ground was broken at the straggling village of 
Omaha, December 2, 1863. George Francis Train, 
original genius and eccentric financier—about to ac- 
quire 500 acres here and to boom town sites out along 
the line—made the principal speech, in which he pre- 
dicted that the road would be completed within five 
years. Many persons laughed; but he did not far 
miss his guess. Governor Saunders of Nebraska 


wielded the spade. 
86 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


Telegrams were received from East and West, con- 
gratulatory: from the mayors of New York and 
Denver, from Governor Yates of Illinois and Governor 
Stanford of California; from President Brigham 
Young of Utah, and from President Lincoln at Wash- 
ington, through his private secretary, John Hay. Great 
names attached to the event. The canvass of the Pacific 
Railway was large. 

Sidney Dillon says that the celebration exhausted 
the company’s treasury. 

Grading was deferred for almost a year, awaiting 
financial backing. Forty miles of road, estimated to 
cost $1,000,000, had to be completed without Govern- 
ment aid direct. 

At the close of this year the stock subscriptions had 
increased to 2177 shares; but the treasury receipts com- 
prised only the Io per cent. down, or $217,700. Men 
foremost in the commercial ranks of the country ap- 
peared upon the list. The largest blocks signed for were 
in fifty shares, as taken by Cornelius Bushnell, of the 
New York merchant princes; Edward Cook, the Iowa 
capitalist; Thomas C. Durant himself, H. C. Crane, 
E. T. H. Gibson, and two or three others to-day known 
or unknown. General and President John A. Dix, 
George Francis Train, William B. Ogden, Treasurer 
John J. Cisco, Samuel J. Tilden, the great lawyer ; Mer- 
chants William E. Dodge and Moses Taylor, to whom 
Huntington also had appealed, were among those sub- 
scribing for twenty shares. Thurlow Weed, of Albany, 

87 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


and Banker Augustus Belmont, Lincoln’s war diplomat, 
were among those who subscribed for ten shares; 
Brigham Young, the Mormon president, for five. 
Subscriptions had now practically ceased, with 
$2,177,000 in sight but not due except in driblets. By 
private means and by State means the Central Company 
had boldly let its first contract and had started from 
its Sacramento terminal. In the year and a half since 
the passage of the act the Union Pacific had not opened 
a foot of grade. Luckily, the Act of 1864 relieved the! 
time limitations upon the completion of the first one’ 
hundred miles, and also appealed again to the purses 
of cautious capital. 
The relieving Act of 1864 is among the Ifs of his- 
tory. There is another “If,” less exploited, which 
relates to Samuel Hallett and his own Pacific Railroad. 
The Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western extension 
to join the Union Pacific at the 100th meridian had 
been waiting. Early in 1863 Hallett, a young banker, 
stirred by the beck of empire and romance, came out 
from New York State to do the deeds of youth. He 
financed the proposed extension, authorized by the Act 
of 1862 and later rechristened Union Pacific Eastern 
Division, and Kansas Pacific. The restless John C. 
Frémont became the president. 
In the heart of present Kansas City, Kansas, Hallett 
in August cleared a terminus at the river bank, amidst 
the thickly timbered bottoms, and hacked a right-of- 


way through the forest trees; planted at the water’s 
88 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


edge a post, whose eastern face challenged Missouri 
with the word “ Slavery,” whose western face greeted 
Kansas with the word “ Freedom.” 

“ And thus the Pacific Railway was begun.” 

He had completed some forty miles of track when 
he was assassinated upon the street in the village of 
Wyandotte, Kansas, by an employe, who shot him 
through the back. 

“ Hallett was a man of genius, of boundless energy 
and enthusiasm, fertile in expedients, bold and prompt 
in action. Had he lived he would have been the master 
spirit in the construction of the Union Pacific Rail- 
way, and probably one of the leading railroad men of 
the country.” 

This is the claim by the Kansas statistician in a 
Government report. At the rate with which Hallett’s 
enthusiasm was building his head start might have car- 
ried him to the 1ooth meridian before the arrival there 
of the main line from Omaha; and the provisions of 
Congress would have inspired him to push on, winner 
inthe race. The Union Pacific tracks did not reach the 
meridian beyond Kearney, at mile-post 247, until 
October, 1866. 

The Act of 1864 became operative by approval of 
the President July 2. In the light of these new pro- 
visions the Union Pacific Company rallied. This Au- 
gust a contract was let to Hubert M. Hoxie for the 
building and equipping of the first Too m miles west from 


Omaha at $50,01 000 a a mile, reckoned in securities at face 
ree se paggteanes 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


value; sum total, $5,000,000. Owing to shortage of | 
labor and the balloon ascent of all material, construc-_ 
tion and equipment expenses had swelled as in the case | 
of the Central. . 

Mr. Hoxie had been in charge of the company ferry | 
between Omaha and Council Bluffs. He did not go far 
with his contract. The company decided to do away 
with independent contractors (thus pursuing the course | 
taken by the Central also), and entrusted its building 
march to the financial corporation formed of its stock- 


holders and entitled, at the suggestion of the i irrepres- 
sible George Francis Train, “The Crédit Mobilier. of 
America.” The name, under the "searchlight of Con- 
gressional investigation or prosecution (as may be), 
was accused of covering a multitude of sins. It killed 
Oakes Ames and peppers volumes of committee re- 
ports; but at any rate the road was put through. 

Contractor Hoxie was appointed assistant superin- 
tendent in the train operating department, and served 
efficiently in getting supplies to the front. 

The Peter A. Dey survey of the first forty miles 
from the Missouri River was overruled, upon recom- 
mendation of Consulting Engineer Seymour and Gov- 
ernment Director Jesse Williams. In January, 1865, 
Mr. Dey resigned his office. “I am giving up the best 
position in my profession this country has offered any 
man,” he said, in his letter to the company. Grading to 
the extent of $100,000 had been applied to his sections. 
He testified in after years that the mounting expendi- 

90 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


tures appalled him. Those were indeed days to worry a 
conscientious engineer—days when in the try-out no 
estimates seemed high enough. 

If as chief engineer he was expected to shoulder 
the responsibility for the line, yet was not allowed to 
follow the dictates of his own judgment, he had no 
other recourse than to resign. Time rewarded him, for 
forty years after the completion of the road his grades 
were restored for main traffic. 

J. E. House and D. H. Ainsworth, assisted by 
Colonel Seymour, filled the interim as the construction 
and location engineers out of Omaha. 

The financial investments were taxing the resources 
of the company. The delay in completing the first 
twenty miles of track was serious; the completion of 
~ the first 100 miles within the time limit looked dubious. 

Pending the result upon capital of this amendment, 
and planning also to issue land bonds covering their 
grants upon either side of the line, the company pro- 

ceeded to meet the present emergency. The ways and 
means are piquantly detailed in the testimony of Broker 
John Pondir before the United States Pacific Railway 
Commission in 1887. 

Broker Pondir, a man of voluble grievances and 
considerable aplomb, stated that in May, 1865, he was 
introduced by Secretary of the Interior Harlan to Doc- 
tor Durant, the Union Pacific vice-president, in Wash- 
ington. Mr. Pondir’s services were requested to finance 

oI 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


the Union Pacific. Doctor Durant approved of him, 
and Treasurer Cisco telegraphed: “ Stick to Pondir.” 

The “Boston people ”—evidently that wealthy 
circle which included the Ameses—had not come in 
and capital was still shy of embarking in the National 
enterprise. Broker Pondir engaged to find money— 
“T arrived in New York, and I made up a syndicate 
and I gave them a million dollars in five days.” 

Mr. Pondir was a man of resource and of action. 
He set out to increase the fund by obtaining from all 
the banks of the city an investment of 5 per cent. of 
their capital. He applied to the Manhattan Bank and 
the Phcenix Bank. 

“They told me, ‘Mr. Pondir, you must go to 
Charles H. Russell, of the Bank of Commerce, and if 
he puts his name to it [the plan] you will be very suc- 
cessful in carrying it out.’ ” 

Treasurer Cisco agreed. 

“Tf you can get the Bank of Commerce to come 
into it, the balance of the banks will follow.” 

The directorate of the Bank of Commerce held a 
called meeting and questioned the validity of the Gov- 
ernment subsidies. Attorney Jerry Larocque had been 
appointed to look up the legal aspects of the act; he sub- — 
mitted to Broker Pondir an opinion that “ the whole 
act of Congress was illegal.” 

“A man never lived that was a better man. Hey was 
convinced of it,” stated Mr. Pondir, in retort to the 

92 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


comment that Attorney Larocque was a Democrat, 
albeit Examining Commissioner Anderson’s cousin. 

This opinion might have put a quietus on the cam- 
paign, but with General Dix himself, the company’s 
president, and Treasurer Cisco, Mr. Pondir sought out 
Mr. Daniel Lord. 

Said Mr. Lord: 

“T will give you an independent opinion. I do not 
want to see Mr. Larocque’s opinion; I do not want to 
see Mr. Tracy’s opinion, or Mr. Tilden’s opinion [these 
were the company’s attorneys] ; but I will give you an 
independent opinion on the affair, if you will leave 
it to me!” 

Mr. Lord reported that everything pertaining to 
the act of Congress and to the Union Pacific Railroad 
was valid. 

The Bank of Commerce accepted the Lord opinion; 
would not allot 5 per cent. of the bank’s capital, but 
offered to make a loan of $1,000,000 on the scrip of 
the Government “ to be put in at go,” exchangeable for 
bonds, “ currency 6’s.” 

_“ As long as Pondir is with us, we will finish the 
road in 1876,’ General and President Dix praised, 
pleased with the quick $2,000,000. 

In the words of Mr. Pondir, “after these loans had 
been effected the Boston people came on”’; so did the 
Crédit Mobilier construction company, and for a time 
the Union Pacific management “had all the money , 
they wanted.” Much to his surprise Broker Pondir, 

93 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


who appeared about to fill the rdle of intermediary, | 
similar to the role of Fisk and Hatch for the Central,’ 
soon was released from further responsibility. The 
Ameses had taken the financial helm. Fre 

The first rail was laid, the first spike driven, at 
Omaha, the “ initial point,” July 10, this 1865. ‘By the 
close of the year forty miles of track had been com- 
pleted. The company had confidently expected to lay 
sixty miles of track before the close of the year. But 
the start was again short of the purpose. The discus- 
sion over change of route from the river bank, by the 
Dey survey, bombarded President Lincoln’s successor, 
Andrew Johnson, and kept Omaha and Council Bluffs 
on the anxious seat for a longer time. By the recom- 
mendations of the engineers, the bridging of the river 
should be accomplished at Bellevue, seven miles below 
Omaha and the Bluffs. The river was not bridged, any- 
where, until half a dozen years later; and it did not 
cross at Bellevue; but the changing of the original 
Dey. survey postponed track-laying in earnest from 
mid-July to September. 

With the opening week of January, 1866, forty miles 
of rails were down at last. Brick machine-shops and 
engine-houses had been erected at Omaha. A seventy- 
ton stationary engine for the shops had been hauled 
150 miles across western Iowa by ox-team and ferried 
over. Four locomotives, two first-class passenger cars, 
twenty-five second-class passenger cars, baggage- and 
box-cars, thirty-four platform- or flat-cars and nine 

94 


UNION PACIFIC MEN AND METHODS 


hand-cars had arrived by steamboats up from St. Louis. 
Over 1,000,000 ties had been delivered ; the cottonwood 
ties were being Burnetized or impregnated with zinc 
at the rate of 1000 daily. Several thousand cords of 
wood for the engines had been heaped up. In the Mis- 
souri River bottoms north and south five portable saw- 
mills were turning out more ties, more wood, and bridge 
and car lumber. Preliminary surveys under Division 
Chiefs Reed and Evans had been run to the Humboldt, 
200 miles west of the Salt Lake. The grade had been 
extended to the 1ooth meridian, and surveyors there 
had already been driven in by the Indians. 

After having marked time for three years the Union 
Pacific track finally had obeyed marching orders. It 
was started upon its long, long trek into the wide, 
scarcely known West—reaching forward from its 
one base at Omaha to touch its next base at new 
Frémont, like a great measuring-worm staking off 
an experimental way. 


IV 
PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


Wir the beginning of July, 1864, and while yet 


the Union Pacific had not laid a rail out of Omaha, the ~ 


Central Pacific had opened thirty-one miles of track 
to Newcastle—an initiatory climb of almost 1000 feet 
in the 7000 feet of rise to the snowy summits of the 
_ Sierra, now seventy miles distant. 

Vastly relieved in mind by the Act of 1864, coinci- 
dent with the arrival at the first terminal point, the 


company was confronted apparently more by physical © 


than by financial difficulties. 


Over a million and a half dollars in capital stock — 
were about to be disposed of, and out of this there would © 


be due, on the books, only some $135,000 unpaid. From 
the State the company was entitled to $105,000 annu- 
ally for twenty years. County bonds soon to be avail- 
able aggregated $638,500. For thirteen out of the first 
twenty miles of the completed road the company was 
entitled to $48,000 a mile in Government 6 per cent. 
bonds, and upon the same distance might issue its own 
first mortgage bonds in same amount; therefore it had 
potential resources of $96,000 a mile for the thirteen 
miles, and $32,000 a mile for the remaining seven miles 
out of Sacramento. The gross receipts of the road, 
when it had reached Newcastle, were $121,679.10, and 


with the extension of the rails would steadily mount. 
06 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


But a great proportion of business was being done 
upon paper. The majority of the capital stock had 
been exchanged for the county bonds at par and for 
services rendered. The small sub-contractors had 
been paid largely in cash or equivalent; Charles 
Crocker had been paid by three-eighths stock and 
bonds, five-eighths cash or equivalent—the equivalent 
being bonds at a discount of 50 per cent., their actual 
marketable value. 

Gold was the only medium of business on the Coast, 
and during the war was at a premium of $1.32 to $1.48. 
The Government and company bonds sold in West and 
East at an average of $1.34. The buying power of 
currency dropped to as low as forty-two cents; its high 
mark was eighty-three cents. There was a time when it 
took three dollars greenbacks to obtain one dollar gold, 
and the Government currencies brought only forty 
cents gold. In the beginning the Government currency 
bonds at 6 per cent., and the company bonds, were prac- 
tically a drug in California, where the local interest 
on loans and investments was running 2 to 3 per cent. a 
month; the same condition militated against the com- 
pany stock. In the East Vice-President Huntington, 
as before related, had his own hard row to hoe. 

The issuance of the Government bonds was long 
delayed. The first issue, in amount of $1,258,000 was 
dated May 12, 1865, bore interest from January 16, 
and was not delivered, according to the company 
records, until 1866. 

a 97 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


By the time these bonds were in hand they and 
prospective issues had been hypothecated long back, and 
pledged by other securities, to obtain the working funds. 
In the depreciation of currency the company was due 
to lose on the Government bonds over $7,000,000. But 
time forbade any arguments on the matter. 

The prices of material were astounding. Practi- 
cally everything save the ties and timber and masonry 
had to be shipped from the East around the Horn or 
transferred across the Isthmus. By the cheapest way, 
around the Horn in sailing vessels, the delivery took 
six months. 

Having been confined by the act of Congress to 
American iron, the company found the price boosted — 
rapidly, and the situation was aggravated by war con- 
ditions. For the first fifty miles of rails, or 5000 tons, 
the company paid $115 a ton, at New York and Boston, 
in company bonds taken at par. For a lot of 500 tons, 
in stock at the mill, there was paid $262 a ton, or 
$267.50 a ton delivered in New York. The average 
figure asked for iron rails at the mills, during the con- 
struction of the road, was $91.70 a ton, as compared. 
with $55 in 1861. The freight rates by the Horn 
averaged $17.50 a ton; by the Isthmus the rates 
mounted to over $50 a ton. Insurance advanced from) 
2¥% to 17 per cent. 

Twenty years afterward the best steel rails cost, in 
California, $45 to $56 a ton; in the East, $35 to $36. 

Engine No. 1 cost, delivered, $13,688; on this the 

98 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


freight by the way of Cape Horn to San Francisco was 
$2282. Engine No. 2 cost $15,196; No. 3 cost $9785 ; 
No. 4, $10,366; No. 5, $16,629; No. 6, $18,549. 

The first ten engines summed $191,000; the second 
ten summed $215,000. These were small locomotives 
of twenty to thirty tons, illy compared with the 100-ton 
moguls of to-day; their cylinders ranging from eleven- 
inch bore and fifteen-inch stroke to eighteen-inch bore 
and thirty-inch stroke; the majority, however, being 
of sixteen-, seventeen- and eighteen-inch bore, twenty- 
two- and twenty-four-inch stroke. Those dimensions 
were adopted through twenty years and more, when 
similar engines might be purchased for $7000 and 
$7500. Before the war, the rolling stock figures would 
have been reduced by a third, with $10,000 as a top 
price on a locomotive. 

By the Isthmus route, steamer and land, freight 
rose as high as $8100 on a single engine. A rush order 
for two engines across the Isthmus resulted in an ex- 
pense of $37,796 on one, when set up; on $37,710 for 
the other. On a shipment of eighteen engines the freight 
charges alone were $84,466.80. 

The Government tax was 6 per cent. 

The engines arrived at San Francisco “ knocked 
down” or disassembled; there were transferred or 
lightered, like all other material, for shipment by boat 
up the Sacramento River, and were assembled at the 
Sacramento shops. 

Prices were relieved but little as construction pro- 

99 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


ceeded. In 1868 thirty-eight locomotives cost 
$418,000, or $11,000 each; passenger coaches were 
entered at $3500 each; flat-cars at $600; hand-cars at 
$150; all in gold—premium $1.65—which brought the 
price of the engines up to $18,150 each, currency. 
Spikes ruled six and one-half cents a pound, as 


compared, later, with two and one-tenth cents; fish- | 


joints rose from $1.90 to $6.50 a hundred pounds, as 


compared, later, with $1.70; bar iron was $110 and 


$115 a ton, as compared, later, with $40 and $45 a ton. 
For telegraph arms there was paid, in thousand 


lots, almost eighteen cents apiece; for insulators, more 
than thirty cents apiece; brick was $30 a thousand; 
rough lumber $40 to $90 a thousand feet; once the 
timber belt was crossed, ties mounted to $1.25, $2, 
$4, $6, $8 each! 


The Union Pacific suffered likewise by the war 
prices and by the restrictions of trade, but the Central | 


was peculiarly helpless, for California manufactured 
no iron and little of anything else. The company always 
had at least $1,000,000 in material in shipment by the 


hazardous water route, and sometimes $3,000,000 in | 
transit at one time. Delays were frequent, owing to 


storm, calm and wreck ; the Government commandeered 
at will for its own use in war exigencies. 

That there was extravagance in contracting and 
purchasing is not to be denied. The accusation is soft- 
ened by the fact that material had to be ordered a year 


in advance, and that time soon became of more value 
100 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


than money. It is not the purpose of this story to 
revive long-dry controversy. The unquestionable 
methods, alone, through which with scarcely a break 
and by dint of courage, will-power and consummate 
skill in managing men and events the builders of the 
Far Western link in the first transcontinental railroad 
earned a goodly measure of what they acquired supply 
a subject inspiring enough for great American history. 

Vice-President Huntington spent his time princi- 
pally in New York, preparing the way for the bonds of 
company and Government and turning the credit of 
himself and associates into gold—without which busi- 
ness could not be done in California. He says that he 
and the firm of Huntington & Hopkins supplied the 
company with a large amount of construction money : 
the firm sometimes taking the company’s notes and he 
himself buying stock and bonds outright. The stock 
in the beginning was accepted at par, $100; eventually it 
sank as low as nineteen cents, and went begging at that. 

President Stanford obtained loans in San Fran- 
cisco, pledging therefor his own paper and the paper 
of Huntington, Hopkins and Charles Crocker. Few 
capitalists and no bank there would accept the com- 
pany’s bonds, the county bonds were subject to 30 per 
cent. discount., the Government currency 6s did not 
appeal ; and interest on loans was, as said, 2 per cent. 
and upward until the Bank of California lowered it to 
I per cent. a month. Under these conditions President 


Stanford nevertheless furnished collateral sufficient 
IoI 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


for the purpose, and so well upheld his credit that from 
a rating of $100,000 he gained until he was upon 
the Bank of California’s debit ledger in the sum 
of $1,300,000. 

Faith may move mountains, and in the case of the 
Central Pacific may appear to have overcome moun- 
tains; but the abilities of that building coterie in their 
climb onward and upward rivals the miracle of the 
loaves and fishes and the widow’s cruse. The keystone 
of their amazing success was faith, perhaps—business 
faith—and cemented by teamwork and daring. 

As previously stated, the first eighteen miles of 
grading and track-laying had been consigned to Charles 
Crocker (the “ Co.” may be omitted as superfluous) as 
contractor. Samuel S. Montague, selected as chief en- 
gineer, succeeding the lamented Judah, might be re- 
garded as an experiment equal to that of the road. He 
was a young man, without name as a railroad engineer. 
He proved to be worthy of his trust—“ faithful, honest 
and proficient.” He died in 1883, aiter having served 
as chief engineer for the Central to that date. Assist- 
ants to Mr. Montague were Lewis M. Clement, who 
went all the way through from Section No. 1 to Prom- 
ontory ; William Hood, who entered the Central Pacific 
service in 1867 and accompanied the line over the 
Sierra—and at this writing is chief engineer of the 
Southern Pacific as successor to Mr. Montague; Butler 
Ives, S. M. Buck and William Epler, upon divisions in 
Nevada and Utah; McCloud, Phelps, Haslett, Hutchin- 


102 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


son—who, like Engineer Ives, are to-day only names, 
second to the name of Judah himself. 

J. H. Strobridge, still living in 1919, became su- 
perintendent of construction under Charles Crocker. 
A. L. Bowsher was foreman of the telegraph crew. 
Arthur Brown was bridge superintendent, this depart- 
ment including the immense trestles and the miles of 
snow sheds in the mountains. The roll of the Pacific 
Railway is a roll of heroes paraded under prosaic titles. 

The first eighteen miles had been completed not 
without difficulties. The tailings from the hydraulic 
mining up the American River were filling the bed and 
causing a constant rise of the stream, so that an ex- 
tremely heavy fill protected by riprapping was necessary 
to conduct the railroad grade for the three miles across 
the overflow lands from the Sacramento levée to the 
river. The piles for the bridge across the American 
River had to be driven through fifteen to twenty feet 
of tailings. 

The eighteen miles from the levée to connect with 
the old California Central line at the Junction, present 
Roseville, was begun in February, 1863, and completed 
in the early winter. The Crocker contract was for 
$400,000, $250,000 in cash, the remainder in securities. 
The final bill amounted to $425,000, allowance being 
made for extras. The bridge across the American 
River had cost $100,000. Mr. Crocker says when he 
started in he had $200,000 in personal assets ; that when 
he finished he was owing money. He had been obliged 


103 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


to petition the company for an advance payment, in 
order to satisfy his men. The company was then owing 
him $48,000. He offered to accept company bonds at 
fifty cents on the dollar, so that he might be enabled 
to raise the funds. 

Once at Junction, the company “ concluded to build 
up to Newcastle, some 31 miles.” Progress~was by 
the hop-along method, while sparring for openings. 
Public sentiment still was much adverse to the com- 
pany. Many interests were fighting it. Mr. Crocker 
literally took off his coat; his eighteen miles had not 
daunted him, and he prepared to bid for the construc- 
tion of these next thirteen miles. He was now dog- 
gedly heart and soul allied to the Central Pacific project. 

Owing to the howl raised against him by other con- 
tractors, alleging that he was a favorite with the com- 
pany, he was awarded only two miles: the hardest two. 
He took them, and also the risk. The eleven other 
miles were apportioned among several bidders. The 
plan did not work out well. Labor was scarce and inde- 
pendent; the contractors outbid each other for men; 
prices of labor consequently mounted alarmingly ; there 
were strikes, delays and quarrels; eventually the bulk 
of the thirteen miles fell to Crocker again. 

Newcastle was reached in early July, 1864. Here 
the work stopped. It was a period of discouragement. 
County bonds were being held up, suits were pending, 
even labor appeared to regard the company as fair prey 


as long as it lasted. Grant had been defeated at Cold 
104 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


Harbor, and gold was quoted at $2.90; currency at 
thirty-five cents. The board of directors decided that’ 
to let the construction by stretches of one or two miles 
would so disorganize the labor market that the wage 
scale would prove ruinous. 

But in nine miles more the next twenty-mile division 
would have been completed and the company be entitled 
to the Government subsidy upon the same; the Act of 
1864 provided for a two-thirds subsidy payment upon 
the graded line in advance of the rails ; therefore Charles 
Crocker was authorized to go ahead, and as far as he 
could. He went—until, he says, all his money and all 
his borrowing power were gone, too. 

“ That was the time when I would have been very 
glad to take a clean shirt and lose all I had, and quit.” 

He was not the quitting kind. Neither were the 
three, his associates. On May 10, 1865, the tracks were 
into Auburn, five miles from Newcastle; another month 
and they had arrived at the historic emigrant station of 
Clipper Gap, seven miles farther, or forty-three miles 
from Sacramento. They were slowly forging on east- 
ward, to replant the incoming trail of the Forty-niners, 
as the Union Pacific was destined to replant the kin- 
dred, older trail outgoing from the Missouri. 

Now forty miles had been completed. The subsidy 
was long postponed, but the future had brightened. The 
war in the East had ended satisfactorily to Northern 
industries and an easier money market might be antici- 
pated. The Act of 1865 had been passed by Congress. 


105 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


This act, approved March 3, 1865, permitted the com- 
panies engaged in the Pacific Railway work to issue their 
bonds upon 100 miles of their grade, superstructure and 
so forth for 100 miles in advance of their continuously 
completed line—thus providing more funds for press- 
ing emergencies. 

Such an extension of borrowing power, at this 
time, vastly strengthened the resources of both com- 
panies. From that date the Central people were enabled 
to employ their bonds in considerable degree, and the 
road was usually mortgaged for the 100 miles ahead. 

All the construction contract from Clipper Gap 
eastward had by resolution of June 4 been assigned 
by the directors to Charles Crocker & Co. until new 
orders. Illinois Town (the Colfax of to-day, as re- 
christened in honor of Speaker Schuyler Colfax, over 
whose distinguished presence California made much 
ado in this summer of 1865), eleven miles distant, 
beckoned as the next terminal point. 

The country ahead had been changing rapidly. 
From the winding but gradually ascending way the 
survey was leading into the main foothills of the Sierra. 
The engineers of the road characterized the route up 
from Newcastle as one of the most difficult on the line 
—a fact that may not impinge upon the senses of the 
modern traveller when he bears in mind the stupendous 
trestles and hanging-curves of the line beyond. 

The company had been a year in getting from New- 


castle to Clipper Gap, twelve miles. Part of this time 
106 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


was credited to delays in marshaling funds and settling 
the labor question; but although the rise in the twelve 
miles was only 800 feet, much of the distance demanded 
sweeping detours and prolonged grades. 

Two months conquered the eleven miles to Illinois 
Town, at an elevation of 2242 feet—a climb of 500 feet 
from Clipper Gap. Here, on September 10, end 0’ 
track rested for 1865. Record for the year, twenty- 
three miles; not an encouraging record to the public. 

The gross earnings for May were reported at $740 
a day, gold; for June they had increased to $1080 


a day. The passenger rates were ten cents a mile, 


freight rates fifteen cents a ton per mile; all gold. 

Whether or no there was encouragement to be 
found in these figures as given out, the nation, even 
California, had not yet awakened to the main truth: 
that here was a little squad of business soldiers con- 
quering, by physical and mental force combined, the 
apparently unconquerable. 

Dutch Flat, whence the company wagon-road was 
opened to tap the Placerville-Virginia City stage and 
freighting road, lay only thirteen miles before. Skeptics 
in superabundance still asserted—and never more as- 
suredly—that the vaunted Central Pacific of California 
would reduce to merely the abortive “ Dutch Flat and 
Donner Lake Route”; that, confronted by the snows 
and gorges of the high Sierra, it would rest content with 
the traffic diverted by the wagon-road from the Nevada 


silver fields. Rival interests vigorously circulated the 
107 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


statement by an engineer of reputation that the further 
progress of the railroad through the mountains by the 
Judah survey would require an expenditure of from 
$250,000 to $300,000 a mile. 

The company combated this statement; issued a 
counter-statement in which it decried the “ oft-repeated 
slander” that the road was designed to be only a 
feeder, and added, over the signature of President 
Stanford, that both the Government and company 
bonds were appreciating since the close of the Rebel- 
lion ; that few company bonds had yet been offered ; and 
that with the proceeds of the Government bonds and 
certain loans, and by the privilege of its own first mort- 
gage bonds covering 100 miles in advance, the com- 
pany “is fully warranted in considering itself able to 
overcome the Sierras as rapidly as possible, and in 
undertaking the work beyond.” 

In mid-August the Speaker Colfax party from the 
East inspected the line from Sacramento to end o’ 
track at Colfax, and on along the grade almost to the 
summit. Through Editor Bowles and his Springfield 
(Massachusetts) Republican, and Journalist A. D. 
Richardson, New York Tribune man and ex-prisoner 
of war, the American people were given their first 
authoritative unbiased tip upon the mighty achievement 
ever waxing amidst these wild fastnesses. | 

Heretofore the project, so slowly developing, of the 
Pacific Railway had been but briefly treated in the 


National press. California was safe and remote, and 
108 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


war news held the columns of daily and weekly in stern 

grip. Truth to say, through several years of actual 

construction work the Pacific Railway lacked adver- 

tising other than that put out by its companies in pros- | 
pectuses and reports and the financial departments of | 
the public prints. 

Editor Bowles, no doubt properly inspired, called 
attention to the lavish financial backing of the Central 
Pacific—according to his figures, $6,000,000 in Gov- 
ernment, State and company bonds already accrued and 
none utilized; for the work so far had been accom- 
plished, he understood, by means of the sale of stock, 
the county subscriptions, and the earnings. Out of this 
income the company showed $500,000 surplus. 

Possibly Mr. Bowles was no financier—his profes- 
sion did not tend in that direction. Of more worthy 
reckoning was his exploitation that in its last annual re- 
port the company declared it would be into Salt Lake 
within three years (for Stanford, Huntington and their 
cooperates had this goal firmly fixed before them) ; and 
he recites that the grading crews, mustering 4000 China- 
men, were working twenty-five miles ahead of the rails. 

As general construction superintendent Charles 
Crocker was proving of astonishing mettle. He was 
“‘ the engine that drove everything ahead,” and “ from 
a small dry-goods merchant had rapidly developed into 
a great organizer and manager.” 

He had changed and advanced as the character of 
the work had changed and advanced, from the first 

109 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


thirty miles in the Sacramento Valley and the short 
sections over which the sub-contractors had warred by 
hiring labor away from each other, to the high country, 
the fuller purse and the need of thousands of hands 
instead of hundreds. 

He solved the labor problem by answering with 
Chinamen. White labor on the coast was independent 
to the extreme. Why should an able-bodied man wield 
subordinate pick and spade at a dollar or two dollars 
a day when he might earn four dollars a dayat the docks | 
and the mines, and in the hills perhaps make his ever- 
lasting fortune by a lucky stroke of a tool? The 
gambling spirit of the Eldoradans was still rampant, 
kept alive by the Nevada excitements. A trip pass for 
grading or track-laying duty, to end o’ track, was very 
likely to be but a stepping-stone in a journey to the 
Comstock, the Washoe and the White Pine lures. The 
man kept on going. 

During the White Pine craze 2000 laborers were 
shipped across the mountains to Humboldt Wells be- 
fore a hundred stuck. 

Crocker countered upon this tendency when, jn the’ 
spring, at Auburn, he met a wage-strike among the 
Irish laborers by directing his construction superin- 
tendent, Strobridge, to send down for some Chinamen. 
They were set at work—much to the disgust of the } 
Irish, who “ begged us not to have any Chinamen 
come.” But the Chinamen did so well, and there was 


such pressure bearing, calling for speed, that to end 
110 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


the bickering the “big boss,” issuing a call for 5000 
laborers, repleted the ranks of unenthusiastic Celts by 
filling up with Mongolians. 

In the beginning for $26 a month and keep them- . 
selves, later for $30 and later again for $35, they 
trooped in from Sacramento and San Francisco, in 
their basket hats, their blue blouses and flapping panta- 
loons, bringing their scanty outfits, their placid visages 
and choppy talk, to face heat and cold, storm and toil 
and American curses, and require only their dollar a 
day and an infrequent lay-off in tribute to some Joss. 

“ Crocker’s pets ” they were styled by the invidious. 
But despite the hullabaloo levelled against this invasion 
of “yellow” labor, in the fall of this 1865 Superin- 
tendent Crocker had some 3000 of them at work under 
white bosses, mainly Irish; he was planning to import 
more, from China itself, when occasion demanded. . 

Once shown what and how, the Chinaman became 
an efficient toiler. Hitherto his hard labor had been: 
confined to the mines. He was not an adept with teams, 
but with pick and spade, basket and wheelbarrow he 
was as steadily industrious as an ant. 

“Quiet, peaceable, industrious and economical— 
ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work 
required in railroad building,” and “as efficient as 
white laborers,” was the report by President Stanford. 
“ Without them it would be impossible to complete the 
western portion of this great National highway within 


the time required by the acts of Congress.” 
IIl 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


To the Chinese laborers “ Mistuh Clockee” was a 
general; under the spur of his forceful presence they 
shuttled back and forth, digged and delved, like thor- 
oughly drilled companies; while to the visitors along 
the grade the sight of the interminable lines of pig- 
tailed figures, diligently pecking into rock and earth, 
trundling their wheelbarrows, or the countless groups 
squatted around their bowls of rice and pork and what- 
not, was an unfailing curiosity. 

The Central Pacific earnings for 1865 were $405,- 
591.95; the net earnings $282,233.44; by the deduction 
of $150,000 interest and $105,000 sinking fund, there 
was left, “carried to profit and loss” (in this case 
profit), $27,233.44. 

The construction work of the year—the twenty- 
three miles of track-laying and some fifty miles of 
grading—footed over $3,200,000; the construction to | 
date, from Sacramento up, summed over five and one- 
half millions; the total cost of the road, over six and 
one-quarter millions; there were additional assets, 
county bonds, materials, and accounts, of almost an- 
other million. The annual report of this 1865 made a 
satisfactory showing. 

Figures, like the country, were getting large. 
Having built fifty-four miles, and braved all financial 
difficulties, the company plunged ahead. It confessed 
to no fears, it promised to Charles Crocker that all 
expenses should be met by private means, if necessary ; 


the tide had turned with the definite turning of the 
112 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


war; securities were rising in market value. Funds 
were forthcoming. The campaign of Vice-President 
Huntington in the East, assisted by the brokers Fisk & 
Hatch, was placing the Government currency bonds 
and the company bonds there, and even in Europe. 
Money thus obtained and not directly applied to the 
construction was loaned out at 11%4 and 2 per cent. a 
month or at a lower annual rate. 

Seemingly undismayed or confused by the tangled 
_ coil of finance, the company kept its gaze clearly fixed 
upon its visions, both the practical and the altruistic. 

“ Many atime,” testified Mr. Huntington, “I would 
have given anybody largely out of the money that I 
had if they would have taken the work off my hands 
and assured me that they would have built the road. 

I have done many things that I did not do for 
profit. I did them in order that the road should be a 
success. California was full of people that wanted to 
come East, including women and children. That point 
had its weight with us. It is very well to sneer at that, 
as people of small minds will; but it had its influence 
on us, and a very large influence. A railroad would 
give people a means of crossing the continent com- 
fortably in six days and on land, instead of spending 
twenty to thirty days on the ocean, with all the incon- 
veniences of such a voyage.” 

And this was true, as Editor Bowles himself pointed 
out : that the whole Western country was poignant with 


women, and men also, who had cut loose from home 
8 113 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


and home folks, and were held captive behind the bars 
of the long water and desert trails that lay between the 
new and the old. 

This fall and winter end o’ track rested at Colfax, 
while the grading, trestling, bridging and tunneling 
were pursued with vigor upon the survey beyond. Three 
regular trains a day were running between Colfax and 
Sacramento. Along the grades eastward 5000 men 
and 600 teams were at work in October. The force 
increased, until by the end of the year there were 7000 
Chinamen, at $30 a month and keep themselves; 2500 
white laborers, at $35 a month and board. They were 
comfortably housed in tents, caves, dugouts and board 
shacks, and supplied by wagons that bucked the mud 
and the snows from Colfax, the base. 

The distance from Colfax to the summit was some 
fifty miles; the spectacular engineering and construc- 
tion feats required, which in the beginning had been 
faced with the zest of a Judah, now were to tax the skill 
of Montague and Gray, and summon the indefatigable 
pluck of Crocker. 

Early in the spring, throwing forward one of those 
high, curving trestles (in this case 1100 feet long) 
with which the road strode across the deep gorges and 
ravines, the rails moved out from Colfax for the attack 
upon the gigantic Cape Horn. . 

Here a bed had been literally chiselled from the 
granite slope so sheer that the laborers, yellow and 
white, were suspended by ropes while they hacked, 

114 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


drilled and blasted, 2500 feet above the rushing Ameri- 
can River. Steadily making height, the iron trail bored 
on past the storied mining camps of Gold Run, Red 
Dog, You Bet, Little York, startling the echoes with 
raucous blasts of the panting iron-train, signalling civi- 
lization’s advance. 

The spring rains fell in floods, the melted snows 
joined, and all trails were bottomless with miry clay. 
The stage from Colfax to Virginia City was stuck in 
the mud of Gold Run’s one street for six weeks straight. 
Passengers were forwarded by saddle, and pack-mules 
took on the supplies for the Central camps. 

In May the track was beating around Cape Horn. 
On the Fourth of July it was into Dutch Flat, and the 
first train carried a patriotic excursion to Sacramento. 
This same day the headings in the Grizzly Hill tunnel, 
ten miles beyond, and 508 feet long, met—‘“ thus prac- 
tically refuting the slanders which had been heaped 
upon the company by its enemies in their oft-repeated 
declaration that Dutch Flat was to be the terminus 
of the road.” 

The work proceeded. At the terminal base there 
was the supply depot, from which the material should 
be forwarded. Near end o’ track there was the con- 
struction camp, for the track-layers, spikers, bolters, 
and so forth. Attached to two engines, the heavy con- 
struction train busily plied back and forth between base 
and end o’ track, with clangor of iron dumping its load 


of rails and fastenings. 
115 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


These were transferred to a low push-car and 
trundled onward by a squad of sweating Chinamen as 
fast as the rails were partially spiked. 

When the iron train had cleared, another construc- 
tion train might enter, bringing the material for trestles, 
bridges, culverts, the powder, the scrapers — all, to 
be hauled forward by teams. 

The graders maintained a pace far ahead. 

To keep everything moving in a difficult, restricted | 
country Superintendent Crocker needs must infuse his 
own energy into 10,000 hearts. The trestles must be 
ready, the fills must be prepared, the bridges waiting, 
the timbering and masonry and iron must be delivered. 

“Why,” he dictates for Historian Bancroft, “I 
used to go up and down that road in my car like a mad 
bull, stopping along the way wherever there was any- 
thing amiss, and spain Old Nick with the boys who 
were not up to time.” 

J.H. Strobridge, the superintendent in charge of the 
field work, lived at end o’ track; and with him, from 
Newcastle clear to the finale at Promontory Point, was 
his wife—who as the only white woman that saw 
the thing through from beginning to end earned the 
title “‘ Heroine of the Central Pacific.” 

In its march eastward and upward the railroad 
erected its stations and water-tanks, put in its sidings, 
founded new towns, established saw-mills for ties and 
timbers. Eventually there were twenty turning out 
equipment for it. 

116 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


As stipulated by the act of Congress, it accom- 
panied its tracks with a telegraph line, upon which the 
Overland Telegraph Company (virtually the Western 
Union), put through by James Gamble and Horace 
Carpentier, superintendent, in four months of 1861, 
from Placerville to connection at Salt Lake with the 
Omaha link (the Pacific Telegraph Company of 
Edward Creighton), already had an eye. The Cen- 
tral’s line did little commercial business as yet; it was 
devoted mainly to dispatching. 

Cisco, fifteen miles from Dutch Flat, and of eleva- 
tion only a scant measure short of 6000 feet, was 
reached November 24, 1866. The famous Emigrant 
Gap of the gold-seekers lay eight miles behind. By a 
- tunnel of 300 feet the rails had cleaved the divide down 
which the emigrant wagons pitched headlong, retarded 
by ropes and drags, and from the trail of the American 
River had penetrated to the South Yuba. 

From Colfax the road had climbed 3400 feet in 
twenty-eight miles; of these, 2286 feet had been gained 
in twenty-three miles. The grades had averaged al- 
most 2 per cent., on ninety-one feet to the mile, and 
the maximum of 116 feet had been touched for three 
miles running. 

Record for the year 1866: the twenty-eight miles at 
a construction expense of $8,290,790—the payments, 
of course, covering considerable grading, grubbing, 
blasting and bridging in the advance. The total cost of 
road and equipment for the ninety-two miles, to date 

II7 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


‘of December 31, was entered at seventeen and three- 
quarters millions. The earnings, gross and net, of the 
year, were twice those of 1865. 

Cisco, named in honor of John J. Cisco, assistant 
treasurer of the United States and at this period treas- 
urer of the Union Pacific, was for nine months the 
terminus of the road while the crowbars and powder of 
grading crews broke a passage for the rails through the 
giant crests of the Sierra. 

From Cisco the summit was fourteen miles, with a 
rise of 1131 feet to the highest stake, 7042 feet eleva- 
tion. At Cisco the snow remained into May; beyond, 
it gathered twelve to sixty feet deep and the drifts 
persisted year to year. 

The work from Colfax up had been considered as 
the climax of railroad building ; was pronounced as the 
most difficult known to the world. But from Cisco to 
the eastward of Donner Lake Nature still sat en- 
trenched twenty-five miles deep, all arrayed to stop the 
progress of the puny tracks. By reason of impossible 
canyons, gorges and abrupt pitches ten tunnels were 
required—one at the Summit, of 1659 feet, almost a 
third of a mile—in order to bridge grades that other- 
wise would be beyond the power of any locomotive The 
emigrant wagon-road might accomplish 400 feet climb 
to the mile, but a railroad, never. In all, there were 
fifteen tunnels upon the engineers’ maps. Numbers 
Three and Four, just outside of Cisco, proved among 


the toughest ; granite so hard was encountered that the 
118 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


shots spurted from the holes as if from a cannon, and 
left the rock uninjured. Nitroglycerin was manufac- 
tured in the camps, but it was more dangerous to the 
men than to the cliffs. 

The winter of 1866-1867 closed in with uncommon 
severity. Storm succeeded storm, until the snow lay 
fifteen and eighteen feet on the level and the fall regis- 
tered forty feet. Throwing its crews well to the front, 
and calling every available man, now with its 10,000 
Mongolians and Caucasians, the company, championed 
by Charles Crocker, had buckled to its job. 

Half the men were engaged in shovelling snow. The 
ground had to be kept bared for the roadbed; the bal-. 
last along the fills had to be kept clear from top to 
bottom until sheds were erected or drains put in, 
otherwise the bases of the embankments would 
settle in the thaws, and grades of 105 and 116 would 
exceed the limit. 

On the right-of-way through the timber the chop- 
pers and grubbers worked in snow to their knees and 
to their waists. An avenue 200 feet wide must be opened 
and the stumps grubbed by pick and powder to a width 
of twenty feet. “ Those are nat Yankee forests,” ex- 
plains Assistant Engineer Clement, “ but forests with 
trees four, six and eight feet in diameter.” Three hun- 
dred men labored ten days to clear a mile. The cost 
approached $5000 a mile. Under the giant stumps 
there were placed two to ten kegs of powder, mingling 
earth and wood in a black vomit of dust and splinters. 

IIg 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The snows gained upon the shovellers and the 
scrapers. Cuts were filling—the tunnel men had to 
excavate through twenty to 100 feet of drift before 
they reached the face of the cliff ; and shut off from the 
world by these masses of snow they burrowed like 
gophers, sending to the surface their débris of rock 
after each round of blasts. The rocks for the-retaining 
walls of culvert and bridge construction were lowered 
down a shaft of snow to the snow caves below. 

It was slow work, trying work, and terrifically ex- 
pensive work. The grades had to be abandoned; space 
was becoming congested; in some of the cuts laborers 
were crowded, thirty teams and 250 men, upon a space 
within a compass of 250 feet. Only orderly Chinamen 
could have managed such restrictions. . 

Transport of supplies by wagons and even by pack 
trains grew precarious. Crocker shipped a third of 
the force to the rear, until spring, and concentrated 
upon the tunnels. 

Sheltered inside, the men could keep going all 
winter. For their sleeping and eating quarters rude 
cabins were erected. Thus they wintered high up 
amidst the whitely coated, heavily timbered slopes, clear 
to the bare vastness of the granite-armored divide. 

The Summit tunnel, with its 1659 feet exclusive of 
approaches, challenged haste; but until it had been 
opened no Central train might roar across the mighty, 
long-forbidding ridge and face the expectant East. 


Engineer Clement, in charge of this division, shortened 
120 


a & 


FIGHTING THE SIERRA SNOW 
Central Pacific R. R., 1866 


DUTCH FLAT MINING CAMP, 1865 ~ 
Just before the Central Pacific built through 


etre 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


time by sinking a shaft at the halfway point. The / 
heading at either end of the tunnel had been started last, 
August ; the shaft, bitten out at the rate of seven inches 
a day, pierced the crown on December 12, on December 
19 was deep enough, to commence the laterals; thence- 
forth the Chinamen drilled and blasted both ways from 
the middle, to meet their fellows boring in from the 
ends. At that, Summit Tunnel was a year in the 
making before the headings met. 

The powder bill waxed portentous, to $54,000 in a 
month. The price per keg had risen from the normal 
two dollars and a half to five dollars; it continued to | 
soar, the Eastern market had been swept bare by the 
Government arsenal demands following the high tide of | 
war; in the gleaning the figures were boosted to eight 
and ten, twelve and fifteen dollars a keg; twelve and 
fifteen kegs were used in a single blast, and the toll 
reached 500 kegsa day. Daily progress in the headings 
ranged from nine inches to two and a third feet; in 
clearing the bottoms, from a foot and a half to five feet. 

The blasts shook the solitudes to their foundations. 
By one volcanic explosion 3000 tons of granite were 
scattered like shrapnel. 

At No. 9 tunnel, by name Donner Peak, the trail 
down from the camp grew so dangerous on account of 
snowslides that all work was stopped. Slides carried 
away camps and crews. In the spring the frozen 
corpses of laborers were revealed as the snow level 
lessened—still upright, their tools in their marble hands. 

I21I 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The tracks into Cisco from the west were kept open — 
by a constant procession of snow-plows bucking the 
drifts with the force of six and twelve engines. Long 
ox-teams, aided by shovellers, broke the trail as best 
they might to the camps above; but when nine feet of 
snow fell in a single storm this was a terrific task. 
Pack-trains of mules bearing the supplies toiled back 
and forth, pigmies amidst the white expanse. 

As the snow gained and the working space became 
more crowded, in order to waste no time with idle men 
Crocker loaded his extra laborers, their tools and sup- 
plies, upon ox-sleds ; sent them across and down, to pre- 
pare the way through the Truckee River canyons near 
the Nevada line, or twenty-eight miles. 

He followed this thrust with a reinforcement of 
forty miles of track equipment—rails, ties, fastenings, 
forty freight cars and three locomotives. For the 
twenty-four miles from Cisco to Donner Lake ox-teams 
and sleds hauled these tons of freight up to the summit 
through snow eighteen feet deep on the level, forty 
and sixty feet deep in the drifts; over and down again 
to the lower, more open country near the base of the 
east slope. Here the loads were transferred to wagons 
and mud-skids and log-rollers for the four miles to the 
Truckee. No stranger procession ever had traversed 
the western trails. Unhampered by snow the men might 
work freely blasting a way in expectancy of the rails. 

The Overland Stage line was now connecting with 


the Central railroad at Cisco; the freight business be- 
I22 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


tween Sacramento and the Nevada mines, by way of 
Dutch Flat and Cisco both, had developed satisfac- 
torily; but it long had been evident that the company 
had no notion of stopping at Cisco, or of justifying its 
title “‘ Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Route” by tapping 
merely the treasure-house of Nevada. 

Nor was it to be content with the 150 miles of lee- 
way beyond the California~-Nevada boundary, as 
granted by the Act of 1865. Projected to pass twenty- 
one miles north of Virginia City and the Comstock 
lode, the road had resolved to make the goal of the 
Salt Lake Valley, 600 miles. 

This goal had been in the minds of the Central 
founders almost from the beginning. As soon as the 
Union Pacific had been set upon its feet, the Big Four 
realized the true task before them. Mining booms 
swelled and burst; Nevada might prove a lucrative 
feeder, but also a transitory one. Railroads thrive most 
securely upon agriculture; the Central looked to that 
and to the long haul. The produce of the Utah beehive 
awaited outlet. ; | 

Vice-President Huntington was not a man adapted 
to halfway measures. As he had predicted, he very 
easily wiped from the horizon that obnoxious limitation 
of the Act of 1865 which would leave the Central 
stranded in the Nevada desert and at the mercy of the 
Union Pacific. 

“In 1866 I went to Washington,” he asserts to 
Historian Bancroft. “I got a large majority of them 

123 


‘< BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 
[the votes] without the use of one dollar. We still 
had our means and wanted to get every vote, so I went 
into the gallery for votes—one head after another. I 
examined the face of every man, and I am a good 
judge of faces. I examined them carefully through 
my glass. I didn’t see but one man I thought would 
sell his vote.” 

The result of this Huntington campaign was the! 
Act of 1866, which among other matters amended the) 
Act of 1864 by authorizing the Central Pacific Railroad | 


' 


Company “ to locate, construct, and continue their road _ 
eastward, in a continuous completed line, until they shall | 
meet and connect with the Union Pacific Railroad.” 

This success had been anticipated by the engineer- 
ing department. Three survey parties under Butler 
Ives, William Epler and S. M. Buck already were in the 
Nevada and Utah field. As early as the fall of 1863 
survey lines had been run clear to the Big Bend of the 
Humboldt, almost 200 miles east of the California 
boundary. The Act of 1866 was seized upon imme- 
diately. Chief Engineer Montague issued his orders. 
Mr. Ives, who had been running lines from the Big 
Bend to the south end of the Salt Lake, was directed 
to explore for a route to the north end of the lake. In 
January of the new year 1867 a route was adopted from 
the Big Bend by way of Humboldt Wells, and thence 
230 miles to the mouth of Weber Canyon beyond 
Ogden. On January 16 the map of the proposed loca- 
tion was forwarded to Washington. 

124 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


But this was not the end. When spring opened 
the Epler party faced eastward; passed up through 
Weber Canyon and Echo Canyon and across the Wa- 
satch and on to Fort Bridger of the eastern slope of 
the Utah-Wyoming range, setting their flags and stakes 
beside the flags and stakes of the oncoming Union 
Pacific engineers. 

The Union Pacific, striking a stride of over a mile 
of track a day, had boasted that it would meet the 
struggling Central at the California line. That was not 
to be. Crocker turned loose an army of 11,000 Mongo- 
lians, 2500 Caucasians, 1000 teams; he recalled his 
force from the Upper Truckee into the hills again; with 
every pick and spade and crowbar and scraper and 
plow he launched fresh attack upon the tunnels and the 
grades. The monthly powder bill swelled to more 
than $64,000. 

Of some of the Chinamen he made masons. 

“What!” protested the skeptical Strobridge, with 
all his faith in the yellow toilers. “ Make masons out 
of Chinamen?” 

“Sure,” replied Crocker. ““Didn’t they build the Chi- 
nese wall, the biggest piece of masonry in the world?” 

The Chinamen proved good masons, and good 
blacksmiths as well. 

Sixty feet of snow had to be shovelled by hand out 
of the winter-locked ravines—“ pitched over six or 
seven times ”’—to reach the grade. In the blasting a 


fragment of rock weighing 240 pounds was hurled two- 
125 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


thirds of a mile across Donner Lake. In August the | 
daylight shone through Summit Tunnel; this midsum- | 
mer, 1867, the first locomotive crossed the divide, and _ 
looked upon gaunt Nevada. | : 
Below, at the Upper Truckee, the tracks were build- 
ing both ways. In early December they cut the boun- 
dary and on December 13 the east-bound construction 
engine poked its nose across the Nevada line. 
At the close of 1867 end o’ track had moved onward 
from Cisco sixteen miles, over the divide and two miles 
down. In the Truckee region the rails stretched 
twenty-four miles, or into Nevada. Between end o’ 
track and beginning of track there was a gap of seven 
miles, in the Donner Lake country, where the surveyed 
line was so difficult of access, on a 116-foot down- 
grade, that horses scarcely could keep their footing. 
But the engineers, Chief Montague and Colonel’ 
Gray, his colleague, declared that the tracks could find 
their way ; the only question was the cost. Cost, at this 
stage of the game, made no difference. The Union 
Pacific was already at the Black Hills of present Wyo- 
ming, and thus 550 miles upon its march. Its pub-’ 
lished maps extended its line to the California boundary 
—it had built 240 miles this year as against the Cen- 
tral’s scant forty, was promising 500 miles more and 
Ogden in 1868; the Central’s trackage was not yet com- 
plete and continuous ; time was worth more than money. \ 
Engineer Montague’s estimates were approved, and \ 


never mind the cost. 
126 


PROGRESS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 


Freight and passengers from Nevada and Cali- 
fornia were transferred across the gap between Truckee 
and Section 108 above. The rails out of Cisco had been 
hastily laid, without ballast; when winter settled down 
this section of the track was abandoned and the trans- 
fer lengthened to the twenty-three miles between te 
Truckee and Cisco. 

During the winter the grading was pushed twenty 
miles into Nevada, or beyond Reno. Early in the 
spring the mountains behind were again assailed. The 
whole sixteen miles of abandoned track had to be 
cleared by hand, for the hard-packed, ice-cemented 
drifts defied the plows. The steaming Mongolians under 
their white bosses worked shovelling the thirty-foot ac- 
cumulation from the ravines in the seven-mile gap. 
Well nigh the whole force of the Central laborers was 
engaged in fighting the stubbornly lingering snow. And 
the Union Pacific was coming on. 

In May the Nevada tracks entered Reno. On June 
15 the mountain gap had been bridged by the iron rails. 
Snowsheds had been started to defeat the winter 
Sierra. Miles of them yet remained to be erected, like 
the tortoise bridges of Roman shields, before the road 
could be operated continuously ; that lesson, unforeseen 
by Judah, had been learned. Thirty-seven out of forty 
miles must be roofed—twenty-three miles in one stretch 
—at a cost of from $10,000 to $30,000 a mile. But no 
matter. Time would not bide on these necessities. 

The road for the 138 miles across California had 

127 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


cost $23,650,000 in cash and convertible paper—rather! 
a far reach from Judah’s $12,500,000. As convertible, 
at thirty cents and fifty cents, the paper brought the 
actual outlay down, however, to some $14,300,000 gold. 
The total receipts by the road for 1867 had been in 
excess of $1,400,000, in which over $1,000,000 was 
from freight, $332,000 from passenger traffic. The net 
balance to profit, on the books, was $870,000. 

The Central girded its loins anew. The sheds could 
be building. Enormous quantities of iron had been 
piling up at the Summit awaiting release. Backed by 
dollars and by energy, and by an abundance of China- 
men (some literally kidnapped at the gangways of the 
San Francisco steamers), and with 500 tons of iron a 
day, taxing fifty cars and ten locomotives, pouring 
down the eastern slopes of the Sierra for the front, the 
Central again far advanced its docile pioneers and 
pursuing along the lower Truckee moved upon the 
Valley of the Humboldt. 


Ny, 


V 
PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


Tue Central Pacific had been wielded like a battle- 
ax; feinting, sparring, then beating down the opposi- 
tion and cleaving asunder the armor of the heights. 
The Union Pacific, once adjusted to the grip of its mas- 
ters, lunged and lunged again with the far reach and the 
uncanny precision of a rapier. 

At the request of the Union Pacific directors Major 
General Grenville M. Dodge, relieved from army duties 
upon the plains, on May 1, 1866, became the chief engi- 
neer of the road. Since the resignation of Mr. Dey, 
Colonel Silas Seymour, the consulting engineer, and 
Mr. Jesse L. Williams, Government director, had con- 
tinued their professional inspections which had lost to 
the company an able and a very honest man. 

The young General Dodge found the great com- 
pany apparently well organized and a “ going ” concern. 
During 1865 the Crédit Mobilier, formed by stock- 
holders of the Union Pacific, had taken over the con- 
tract to build the road to the imaginary 1ooth meridian, 
or 247 miles, at the $50,000 a mile. 

The “Boston people” had been won. Not long 
before his tragic death the untiring Lincoln, his mind 
ever directed upon the nation’s future and now already 

: 129 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


planning for the onward march of peace, had sought 
out Oakes Ames, member of Congress from Massachu- 
setts. In Mr. Ames’s words, he had said, referring to 
the Union ‘Pacific Railroad : 

“ Ames, take hold of this; and if the subsidies pro- 
vided are not enough to build the road, ask double and 
you shall have it. That road must be built, and you are 
the only man to do it; and you take hold of it yourself.” 
And he added, hopefully: “ By building the road you 
will become the remembered man of your generation.” 

Repeatedly importuned by friends and acquaint- 
ances who recognized in Oakes Ames a sterling busi- 
ness man and earnest citizen with means and inclination | 
that would make him the one in a million to promote 
National enterprises, the Ameses this early fall of 1865 
headed a band of capitalists for the relief of the deflated 
Crédit Mobilier. 

This stock company, formed in the spring of 1864 
to finance the construction of the road, was stalled on 
the grade of the Hoxie contract, between Omaha and 
the 247 mile-post. The new members had infused 
it with $2,500,000 fresh dollars—the Ames brothers’ 
contribution being one million dollars—and likewise 
with confidence. 

And from this time onward Oakes Ames and Oliver | 
Ames gave themselves to the cause of the transconti- 
nental railway with every financial and moral resource 
at their disposal. “They were the honestest men that _ 


ever lived,”’ declared Broker Pondir, whose knowledge 
130 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


of men and affairs in the money mart of those days 
equipped him for such judicial summaries. 

In January, 1866, the first terminal base, introduc- 
tory to the “ roaring towns ” of other bases to be sown 
like dragon’s teeth amidst the plains and deserts and 
mountains all the way to Promontory Point, had been 
located at awakened Frémont, forty-six miles. 

In January Colonel Silas Seymour had replied, from 
New York, to the categorical letter from the Govern- 
ment enquiring just what the Union Pacific compre- 
hended in the term “first-class road,” that in his 
opinion a first-class road meant a first-class road: or, 
in other words, like the legs of Lincoln’s typical man 
which should be long enough to reach from the body 
to the ground, a first-class road was a railroad suitable 
and proper in all respects for the nature and extent of 
its prospective traffic! 

These were the general principles, and, as he 
pointed out, the five Government directors, the three 

Government commissioners and the Government stipu- 
lations on grades, curves, gatige, and quality of rails 
seemed to be sufficient safeguards hedging any ten- 
dency to skimp. 

This much, in his official capacity as the consulting 
engineer for the company. To be more specific, as a 
professional man: The locomotives upon a first-class 
road of ordinary grades should be from twenty-eight 
to thirty tons, with five-foot drivers, cylinders sixteen 
by twenty-four inches; the rails should weigh fifty 

131t 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


pounds to the linear yard, and be increased in propor- 
tion to the friction entailed by steep grades and heavier 
engines; the joint fastenings should be either the fish- 
plate or the wrought-iron chair—the chair being ad- 
visable upon the Union Pacific in order to speed the 
construction; ties, eight feet long, six inches deep and 
not less than eight inches in the face; the roadbed of 
proper width and of proper material, and the side- 
ditches governed by the character of the roadbed. 

So much granted, he rather more than intimated 
that to this extent the Union Pacific was capable of 
building within the safety limitations, and that the Gov- 
ernment, secured by its inspectors, might subordinate 
its fears to the “ vigorous prosecution and speedy com- 
pletion of the road.” 

Forty-five of the leading railroad engineers and 
superintendents of the United States, Canada and Eng- 
land had been invited by the Government Board of 
Pacific Railway Commissioners and Directors to 
submit their views “upon a standard to which the 
Pacific and other railroads in which the Government 
has an interest shall be made to conform.” The some- 
what late symposium from meagre contributions by the 
few who managed to find time and to overstep the 
ethics of their training did not alter the construction 
policy of the hastening U. P. or countermand the 
already large orders for materials. 


132 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


When in May Chief Engineer Dodge entered upon 
his duties the grading forces, with their “ patent exca- 
vators,” had been at work since April 11. They had 
put last touches upon road-bed, masonry and bridges 
of the first 100 miles and were heading out into the 
second 100 miles. 

The surveying parties were again in the field from 
Nebraska across into the Utah and Nevada desert— 
where Engineer Reed had encountered a stretch of 
sixty miles without fresh water, which prompted him 
to recommend that in future surveys there camels be 
employed instead of horses! President Brigham Young, 
of the Mormon Church (whose not unreasonable an- 
ticipation that the Pacific Railway would, of course, 
open through his capital was to be shattered), had 
materially assisted the explorations. 

By surveys aggregating several thousand miles two 
important matters had been settled : the first transconti- 
nental railroad was not to strike expectant Denver, and 
it was not to follow through by the other first trans- 
continental trail—the Oregon and California Trail. 

This great historic thoroughfare, worn smooth by 
the fur-hunter, the emigrant and the stage, from the 
main Platte diverged up the North Platte through 
present Wyoming (approximating the Chicago, Bur- 
lington and Quincy tracks of to-day), to Fort Laramie 
post ; thence wended westward to the Sweetwater, and 
by the famed South Pass of the trappers over into the 
Valley of the Green, on the western slope of the Conti- 

133 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


nental Divide. Thence southwest to Fort Bridger of 
the Wasatch Range and to the Great Salt Lake, the 
trail of the Mormons and the California gold-seekers 
trended. The Union Pacific broke another trail that 
in southern Wyoming short-cut the northern curve 
formed by the radius of Fort Laramie and. the Pass. 

To the average mind the old-time Oregon Trail and 
its wide, open, gradually sloping South Pass appeared 
a standing invitation for a railroad. But to this day 
no iron rails have spanned that South Pass, and its 
services as the gate by which the East sought the West 
when the West was newest and most difficult have gone 
unrewarded except in the tributes by historians. 

The Union Pacific engineers viewed it, mapped it, 
estimated its value from all sides. The hard dictates 
of mathematics eclipsed the glow of romance. True, 
the pass itself presented no great engineering difficul- 
ties; but by all reports the snows and winter storms 
there would seriously interrupt traffic; having crossed 
by the detour to the north the railroad would have to 
drop far south again in order to enter the Salt Lake Val- 
ley, thus losing much distance; and there were shorter 
and more practicable routes direct from the Platte. 

Thus the pioneer Oregon Trail onward from the 
Platte was rejected, much to the astonishment of a 
public unlearned in railroad engineering. 

The sidetracking of Denver was a greater surprise, 
equalled only by the later word that Salt Lake City also 
had been declined, with regrets. 

134 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


Denver was admitted to be of high importance as a 
traffic point. For three years surveys were prosecuted 
through the main Rockies west, to find an outlet across. 
Altitudes of over 11,000 feet, with snow and sharp 
grades necessitating tunnels from two to six miles long 
and the expenditure of years and millions in driving 
them, confronted the plucky engineers—with the alter- 
native of turning directly north again from Denver and 
repeating the in-route back to the Laramie Plains of 
present Wyoming. 

The eager hopes of Denver went glimmering. It 
put up a good fight, but its frantic protestations to 
Washington were overruled by the needs of the hour 
for a National railroad built rapidly. Rallying from 
the shock of acute disappointment it began to plan‘a 
connection with the main line. 

As a final result of the surveys of 1865, a through 
line, “ with actual distances and levels,” could now be 
reported “ from Omaha on the Missouri River to Salt 
Lake City,” virtually but not wholly by the Mormon 
Trail. This proposed line followed up the north side, 
not the south, of the Platte, and of the South Platte, 
to Lodge Pole Creek, where previously the Overland 
Stage road diverged north to Fort Laramie and the 
South Pass. From here on across the Black Hills 
spur there was choice of several routes. 

These tentative passes, none of which was adopted, 
would be mentioned only to suggest, as intimated also 
in the Government directors’ report of February, 1866, 

135 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


the “weighty problems of location that must arise in 
the proper adjustment of 2000 miles of railroad line 
traversing a vast mountainous region which, after all 
the liberal and wisely directed efforts of the Govern- 
ment and its competent corps of topographical engi- 
neers, was found, at the commencement of these sur- 
veys, in a great measure unexplored.” 

From Denver north there were 200 miles of moun- 
tain chain, ranging from the snowy heights of Berthoud 
Pass, 11,500 feet (the pass advocated by the Denver 
enthusiasts) to the 8000-feet elevations of the Black 
Hills. The three passes proffered by the Black Hills 
themselves were contained in an extent of almost 
unknown country 130 miles long. 

In the annals of the days a pleasant tale is current 
to the effect that “old” Jim Bridger, dean of the trap- 
per, trader and Indian-fighter fraternity, was sum- 
moned from St. Louis to Denver by the perplexed 
engineers, in order to get his advice upon crossing 
the mountains. 

Whereupon old Jim, disgusted by an errand so 
trivial, with a bit of charcoal drew upon a piece of 
drawing-paper an outline of the range. 

“T could have told you fellers all that in St. Louis 
an’ saved you the expense of bringin’ me here,” he is 
reputed to have said. ‘“‘ Thar’s whar you fellers can 
cross with your road, an’ nowhar else without more 
diggin’ an’ cuttin’ than you think of.” 


It is alleged that the map drawn by old Jim was long 
136 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


preserved among the archives of the Union Pacific. 
However, it seems to have vanished from mortal ken; 
and inasmuch as a personal letter from the late General 
Dodge flatly denies that his aforetime friend and com- 
rade scout ever pointed the way for the U. P.—and 
inasmuch as the railroad does not cross the main Rock- 
ies by any obscure gap but accomplished the feat with- 
out much research—the services of old Jim Bridger, 
in this particular respect, must be accepted as pleasant 
fiction attached to the romance of those days. 

General Dodge did not require this information for 
his engineers. Out of his own experience in command 
of the plains military operations he knew—or thought 
that he knew—of a pass, superior to any detailed in the 
reports of 1865, from the east to the west; and one of 
the first things that he did as chief engineer was to 
direct Engineer James Evans to find it again. The 
story, to be told presently, rather makes up for the de- 
ficiency occasioned by the failure of the Bridger tale. 

Upon the map the line of the Union Pacific from 
Omaha clear to the main range of the Rockies, 700 
miles, appears to have been an easy feat. The traveller, 
whirled smoothly over leagues and leagues of open, 
apparently level country, is likely to agree with the map. 
He fails to realize the difference between a road on 
paper and a road on the ground. And the public, esti- 
mating the building progress of the Central Pacific and 
Union Pacific, at the time fell into the same delusion. 

The Central was obliged to overcome 7000 feet of 

137 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


mountain rise in 100 miles, whereas the Union Pacific. 
had 500 miles in which to overcome a gradual rise of 
5000 feet, and fifty miles more of leeway in which to 
attain the summit of the Black Hills, 2000 feet higher. 
This appeared slight, compared with the rise of 2000 
feet in twenty miles accomplished by the Central. 

Viewing the prospect with journalistic eyes while 
crossing the plains in the spring of 1865, Editor Bowles 
of the Springfield Republican proclaimed that the 
building of the Union Pacific from Omaha to the 
Rocky Mountains “is mere baby work.” 

“Three hundred men will grade it as fast as the 
iron canbe laid. . . . Itisashame all this section 
is not finished and running already.” 

And—*“ From here to Salt Lake, over the Rocky 
Mountains, there are apparently no greater obstacles 
to be overcome than your Western Road from Spring- 
field to Albany, the Erie and the Pennsylvania Central, 
have triumphantly and profitably surmounted.” 

The worthy Mr. Bowles strayed both ways from 
the middle. The route up the Platte Valley did indeed 
proffer a National turnpike—a natural vast onward 
reach, open, unobstructed by abrupt rises and smooth 
to the eye uneducated in scientific engineering. Not a 
paltry three hundred men but an army of three thou- 
sand eventually were grading at full speed to keep 
abreast of the hurrying rails. 

The Rocky Mountains were indeed crossed with 
grades ranging a third less than those employed on the 

138 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


Erie and the Baltimore and Ohio; but not by the passes 
that he selected as so practicable—one of them 11,500 
feet; no, not even by Jim Bridger’s pass, up which his 
stage horses “ trotted with apparent ease.” 

It is a significant fact that neither the Central 
Pacific nor the Union Pacific was enabled to take much 
advantage of the existing stage roads, except in data. 

Between the Missouri River and the Salt Lake 
Valley the best line laid out by the Union Pacific engi- 
neers imposed a total climb of 12,100 feet, divided 
among the plains undulations and the more sweeping 
gradients of the mountain. In all this the maximum 
was only ninety feet to the mile, which called for su- 
preme engineering skill over such a stretch of previously 
unknown country. 

It is strange that the lowly Black Hills spur of the 
Rockies, with elevation of merely some 2000 feet above 
their base, and with the snowy range of the Wasatch 
dividing Utah from Wyoming still looming gigantic 
beyond, should have proved the real stumbling block 
in the path of empire. 


Railroads have in general two methods of crossing | 


mountain ranges. They may follow up the course of 
streams, or they may follow up the divides between the 
streams. The Black Hills objected to either method. 
As Chief Engineer Dodge explained in his reports, the 
streams there were so canyoned and so tortuous that 
they forbade the company of the iron rails; and as to 
the water sheds or divides between, the sedimentary 
139 


a) 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


and the granite rocks met usually at an abrupt pitch 
of from 500 to 1000 feet, forming an impassable 
barrier, and challenging even tunnels. 

Nevertheless, by the discouraging reports upon the 
South Pass, to the north, and the snow passes out of 
Denver, to the south, the middle ground of the Black 
Hills only remained, and the Black Hills must either 
be surmounted or removed. That accident of circum- 
stances which so frequently wins battles and alters 
dynasties and moves at zigzag in its mysterious way 
made of General Dodge a Judah in the field, and opened 
the way across the Black Hills after the best engineering 
science of the keenest ambitious minds had failed. 

In the spring of 1865 while returning from the 
Powder River campaign he had left his column at Lodge 
Pole Creek, east of the Black Hills range, in order, 
with a small escort, to explore along the range itself. 
The Sioux cut him off from the column, and drove him 
to the vantage ground of a long ridge bisecting the flank 
of the hill. He and his escort, leading their horses and 
using their rifles, fought the Indians off, at the same 
time making what time they might down the ridge in 
order to signal to the troops on the plains below. 

It was almost dusk when the rescuing company ar- 

ved. In rejoining the column they all continued down 
the ridge to the plains. 

Then said General Dodge to one of his guides: 

“Tf we save our scalps I believe we have found the 
crossing of the Black Hills.” 


140 


Pal 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


He had in mind the railroad; for since 1853 the 
transcontinental railroad and he had never been di- — 
vorced, and he was well aware that for two years the 
engineers of the Union Pacific had been looking for a 
crossing of the Black Hills. 

He marked the foot of the grade by a lone tree; 
upon assuming the duties of chief engineer, twelve | 
months later, one of the first things that he did was to | 
instruct. Assistant Engineer Evans to find Lone Tree | 
Pass and run a line up the ridge. | 

The result was the establishment of a ninety-foot 
grade, extending almost unbroken from near present 
Cheyenne to the flat atop the Black Hills, whence Engi- ~ 
neer Evans might gaze over and down to the great 
Laramie Plains in the beckoning west. As Lone Tree 
Pass it had been designated; as Evans Pass it was re- 
named at once—soon to be permanently entitled Sher- 
man Summit in honor of the man who, receding from 
his former position, was proving to be one of the 
stanch supporters of the road. 

The discovery of this easy pass solved a vexatious 
problem, although it was only one pass, and first of 
several, and the unknown Red Desert, the fastnesses 
of the Rockies, the Utah desert still lay before in an 
ever-extending array. 

As Oakes Ames says, in reference to only the six 
hundred and sixty-seven miles of construction which 
in 1867 he personally assumed : 

“To undertake the construction of a railroad, at 

141 


~ 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


any price, for a distance of nearly seven hundred miles 
in a desert and unexplored country, its line crossing 
three mountain ranges at the highest elevations yet at- 
tempted on this continent, extending through a country 
swarming with hostile Indians, by whom locating engi- 
neers and conductors of construction trains were re- 
peatedly killed and scalped at their work ; upon a route 
destitute of water, except as supplied by water-trains, 
hauled from one to one hundred and fifty miles, to 
thousands of men and animals engaged in construction ; 
the immense mass of material, iron, ties, lumber, pro- 
visions and supplies necessary to be transported from 


~ five hundred to fifteen hundred miles—I admit might 
“well, in the light of subsequent history and the 


mutations of opinion, be regarded as the freak of a 
madman if it did not challenge the recognition of 
a higher motive.” 

The location problems were not the only ones. The 
Union Pacific was like a cantilever bridge begun in 
mid-stream and teetering out through vacancy for a 
farther bank. It commenced nowhere; it reached. 
forward without visible support and where it would 
end was uncertain. 

Its line of communication with supplies already 
‘was tenuous, and in its progress of a thousand miles 
would grow more tenuous. The Central Pacific began 
with its base at tidewater, and at the wharves of a 
thriving town. The Union Pacific’s base was at the 
west or frontier side of the unbridged Missouri, upon 

142 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


which navigation was practicable scarcely more than 
three months in the year, between freshet and low 
water. The nearest delivery of supplies was at St. 
Louis; thence they must be transported by steamboat 
up-river 300 miles; or at the end of the railroad then 
building across lowa—the Chicago and Northwestern 
being distant over 100 miles. From end of railroad 
transportation was by wagon to the Missouri, and by 
ferry to the Omaha side. 

It had in contemplation over 6,000,000 ties, over 
300,000 tons of iron rails. Clear to the Black Hills, 
540 miles, there was no large timber except cottonwood 
—and cottonwood would rot out in two or three years 
unless treated by the zinc process. Some cedar was 
available, in doubtful quality and at high prices. Oak 
ties needs must be contracted for by quantity as far 
east as Pennsylvania and New York; by the time they 
were delivered at Omaha they would cost $3.50 each. 

The iron, shipped by rail and boat, rose to $138 
a ton. The company had purposed to build its own 
cars at the Omaha shops, but the locomotives purchased 
in the East lacked only a margin of the long freight 
haul to make them equal in price to the Central locomo- 
tives. Beyond Omaha there were no settlements of any 
size, no industries, no produce save the scant supplies 
of hay cut by a few ranches and usually contracted for 
by the army and the freighting outfits. Fuel wood was 
$100 a cord, grain $7 a bushel, hay cut from the bottoms 
$34 a ton, on the plains line of the Union Pacific. 

143 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Ties, iron, feed, bridge timbering, provisions—all 
material must be brought from Omaha on a single track 
and without delays and without interrupting local traf- 
fic. Verily, the Union Pacific of the Pacific Railway 
was built from one end. 

The red warriors on the buffalo range vastly in- 
creased the difficulties. For the three years of build- 
ing across the plains from Omaha to the Rockies they 
bitterly fought the road, impeding it at almost every 
mile. It proved to be a trail far eclipsing in danger the 
Wilderness Road blazed by Daniel Boone and his thirty 
into Central Kentucky. The wooded paths of the 
Ohio Valley when the fierce Shawnees and Wyandots 
lurked for the invading Long Knives were not so bloody 
as this iron trail piercing the country of the Cheyennes 
and the Sioux. Surveyors worked under military escort 
—they were attacked, and they died beside their transits 
and their stakes; graders digged and delved after they 
had stacked their guns within instant reach—and 
they, too, died upon their picks and shovels. Construc- 
tion trains and way freights were derailed or stormed 
by bullet and arrow. The boldest assault of all oc- 
curred, not in the initiatory days but in 1867, only a 
few miles west of old Fort Kearney, and between estab- 
lished nations. . 

However, in 1866 the Civil War had ended; the 
ranks of North and South had been mustered out. 
Omaha was doubling in population—this year 630 new 
buildings were erected. Labor was plentiful, and so 

144 


| 


t 
: 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


were fighting men in army shirts and trousers. The 
meagre force of 200 graders, a sprinkling of horses 
and oxen and two excavating machines with which the 
road had started in the fall of 1864 soon had been 
quadrupled and was working over 200 miles in advance 
of the track. 

This spring and summer the chief engineer travelled 
over the line in person as far as the east slope of the 
main Rockies; he was accompanied by Consulting En- 
gineer Seymour, Government Director Jesse Williams 
and Geologist David Van Lennep. Mr. Van Lennep 
made critical examinations for coal (a very necessary 
article), iron, and formations that would supply build- 
ing stone and ballast. 

Under the increase of labor and of efficient or- 
ganization the rails leaped ahead. Editor Bowles’s 
dictum that such road building was mere ‘‘ baby work” 
seemed accurate. 

The track early passed Columbus, ninety miles out 
of Omaha—Columbus, George Francis Train’s pet, by 
him and its hopeful citizens pictured as the population 
centre of the United States, and the future National 
capital. Issuing from glad Columbus, which began to 
move its houses from the ferry crossing of the Platte 
to the depot, the rails spanned the Loup River by means 
of an iron bridge 1500 feet long, and headed into the 
400 miles of plains, treeless except for the stream ~ 
courses and practically without a human habitation 
upon the survey line. 

10 145 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


And after the 400 miles of plains there waited, 
darkly brooding, the desolate Black Hills—the nrst 
timber, the first fuel either coal or wood in any quan- 
tity; and after that the waterless, trailless, immutable — 
Wyoming basin intervened before the next supply coun- 
try, that of the wooded Wasatch might be reached. 

By the middle of September 180 miles of track had 
been laid in the five months—an average of over a mile 
a day. The first division point had been established 
at the German settlement of Grand Island (which had 
to be moved across the Platte), and end o’ track was 
twenty-five miles beyond old Kearney stage and emi- 
grant junction, on the opposite side of the river. 

The Government acts required that the first 100 
miles of road be completed by June 27, this year. A 
company circular had promised that the Marathon 
should be opened to the public on July 4. Not only was 
the promise fulfilled but there was no resting upon oars. 

The famed tooth meridian, signalized by a lettered 
arch, at 247 miles, was attained on October 5—Octo- 
ber 15 the first Great Pacific Railroad excursion started 
from New York and gathering momentum along the 
way, arrived at Omaha for inspection to the meridian. 
But while the company had been journeying by rail and 
boat and stage, lo and behold, the magic railroad had 
grown another link, like a jointed serpent; so that the 
delighted excursionists needs must pursue end o’ track — 
an added thirty-two miles before they overtook it. - 


The construction year of 1866 closed upon Decem- 
146 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


Ser 11 with the astounding record of 260 miles of track 
laid in exactly eight months—still an average of more 
than a mile to a working day. The Central end o’ track 
and terminal base were in the Sierra snows of bustling 
Cisco, ninety-two miles. The Union Pacific terminal 
base was at “roaring’”’ North Platte (a genii city up- 
sprung over night) of the dun plains, 293 miles, and 
its end o’ track was at the 305 post, twelve miles far- 
ther. Truly, the dusty, rusty cowhide brogans of the 
sweating, swearing toilers with tools and arms had 
betaken to themselves the proclivities of the seven- 
league boots. 

No such railroad building ever had been dreamed 
of. The Atlantic portions of the Pacific Railway now 
formed the longest air-line route in the world; it 
stretched straightaway over the heaving surface of the 
astonished plains. Pointing west, it was to be the 
shortest route to the Orient. 

Statisticians grew busy, drawing their figures of 
probable traffic from shipping lists, insurance compa- 
nies, and the plains and mountain overland trade. Three 
hundred thousand passengers annually carried from 
coast to coast at $150 each: $45,000,000. Three hun- 
dred thousand tons of freight at $1 a cubic foot or $34 
a ton: $10,200,000. Gross receipts, to the through 
line, $55,200,000—from which the Union Pacific would 
net $15,000,000 as its share. 

“ We leave this estimate on record,” says Commis- 
sioner of Statistics for the State of Ohio, Hon. E. D. 

147 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Mansfield, “as a moderate (not an exaggerated) view — 


of the business and profits which may be fairly expected 
from the Grand Pacific Railroad.” 

The $15,000,000 net earnings were a long time in 
coming ; the figures of the statisticians ran true to form, 
but the worthy gentlemen did not take into considera- 
tion the various dark horses—the Canadian Pacific, the 
Northern Pacific, the Kansas Pacific to’ Denver, the 
Santa Fé, and later roads—that entered the transcon- 
tinental race and divided the purse. 7th 

The construction and equipment to thas, sya 
meridian footed over $13,000,000; to the end o’ track, 
sixty miles beyond, totalled some $16,000,000. The 
Crédit Mobilier had financed the greater portion. 

The road was being operated by the contractors, 
pending acceptance by Government and company. This 
winter Chief Engineer Dodge prepared for another 
dash. New Fort Sanders, figured as 288 miles dis- 
tant across the Black Hills of the “ Dakota” Wyo- 
ming and at the south end of the Laramie Plains, was 
his objective. He announced his plan in a letter to his 
firm friend and believer, General Sherman. General 
Sherman replied, from St. Louis, date of January: 

“T have just read with intense interest your letter 
of the 14th. Although you wanted me to keep it to 
myself, I believe you will sanction my sending it to 
General Grant for his individual perusal, to be returned 
to me. It is almost a miracle to grasp your proposi- 


tion to finish to Fort Sanders this year, but you have 
148 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


done so much that I mistrust my own judgment 
and accept yours.” 

General Dodge merited the confidence. Events 
were shaping in favor of the rapid work contemplated. 
The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad across Iowa 
was connecting with Council Bluffs opposite Omaha. 
There soon would be all-rail communication from the 
bank of the Missouri River with the iron and tie sup- 
plies of the East. Work upon the bridge was in pros- 
pect; the company had hopes that the bridge would be 
completed and opened to traffic by the end of the year! 

The surveying parties who had been called into head- 
quarters for a winter’s revision of their notes hustled 
out from Omaha for the Indian country in the first 
week of March. They were snowbound at North Platte 
terminus and beyond, and delayed for six weeks in 
their field work. The parties that had wintered at Salt 
Lake left there April 1. 

The surveys of the mountain and desert region had 
scarcely commenced when Assistant Engineer L. L. 
Hills was killed by the Indians six miles east of present 
Cheyenne. It was to be a bad year in the field: young 
Percy Browne would run his last line, and the Thomas 
Bates men would almost lose their lives to desert thirst. 
Graders and train crews also were to suffer from arrow 
and bullet and knife. 

Final locations had to be consummated through 
the most difficult portion of the projected route: from 
the high plains of southeastern Wyoming, at that time 

149 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Nebraska Territory ; over the Black Hills of the Lara- 
mie Plains, the Red Desert and the Bitter Creek Region, 
over the Wasatch and to the Salt Lake; for the graders 
were pressing after the survey stakes and the rails were 
to clang at their heels. 

Alarmed by the reports from the Indian country, in 
June General Dodge hastened forward. Severity miles 
of track already had been laid in two months. The 
terminus base was at new Julesburg, “ red-hot” new 
Julesburg, “ wickedest city in America,” 377 miles from 
Omaha, across the Platte from the old Overland stage 
station of the same name at the Upper California cross- 
ing of the older Oregon Trail. 

A distinguished party accompanied General Dodge 
upon his inspection tour of the fighting advance. From 
Omaha, as his guests, Brigadier and Brevet Major 
General John A. Rawlins, chief-of-staff to General 
Grant, destined to be Secretary of War for six months 
of 1869 and then dying in office—and now, this June 
of 1867, afflicted with tuberculosis and added to the 
party at the personal request of Grant in the hopes that 
the trip would benefit his health; his aide-de-camp, 
Major William McKee Dunn, captain in the Twenty- 
first Infantry; General Rawlin’s guest, John F. Cor- 
with, of Galena, Illinois; young John Duff, Jr., of 
Boston, son of Director John R. Duff; a Mr. Rogers, 
who appears not to have gone through; Engineer Jacob 
Blickensderfer, Jr., of the engineering corps (ten years 
later chief engineer of the U. P.), who had been depu- 


150 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


tized by President Andrew Johnson to determine the 
true eastern base of the Rocky Mountain, whereat the 
Union Pacific would begin to draw its $48,000 a mile 
of Government subsidy for 150 miles onward ; Govern- 
ment Director T. J. Carter, Geologist David Van 
Lennep, and Consulting Engineer Silas Seymour, of 
New York, who would assist Mr. Blickensderfer in 
determining the foot of the Rockies. Division Chief 
James Evans also went out; by reason of his accurate 
work the Dodge pass over the Black Hills had been 
named Evans Pass, and he was the man to help his chief 
now to establish the final location line. There were 
several surveyors, as reinforcement to the Indian- 
harassed field parties. 

The little company was joined, en route, by two 
companies of the Second Cavalry, from Fort McPher- 
son on the Platte, commanded by Captain (brevet Lieu- 
tenant Colonel) J. K. Mizner and First Lieutenant 
James N. Wheelan, with Surgeon Henry B. Terry, 
Department Quartermaster General William Myers, 
and a wagon train. 

At Julesburg, end o’ track, Construction Superin- 
tendent Sam Reed and General Jack Casement, track 
contractor, were added. 

June 28 the expedition moved westward out of 
turbulent Julesburg by easy marches to accommodate 
the strength of General Rawlins. At Crow Creek, 140 
miles, the site of the next division point was denoted, 


and named Cheyenne. The Fourth of July was spent: 
I5I 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


here; General Rawlins delivered a patriotic speech to 
the party and to the detachment of General C. C. Augur, 
commanding the Department of the Platte. General 
Augur had come down from old Fort Laramie to meet 
the Dodge column and designate a new military post 
at the selected division point. This was named Fort 
D. A. Russell, in memory of Major General David 
Allen Russell, of Mexican War and Civil War service. 

Cheyenne, boasting at the outset one cabin erected 
by a trader, speedily boasted a graveyard also. While 
the combined engineering and military columns were 
encamped here the Cheyennes and Sioux attacked an 
east-bound Mormon grader outfit just to the south. 
The train was rescued none too soon; the Indians were 
put to flight by the cavalry, General Rawlins and the 
tenderfoot Easterners gained a knowledge of this kind 
of fighting, and two graders were left underground— 
the nucleus of a graveyard where many another man 
was buried with his boots on. 

The Dodge exploration this summer extended 
across the Black Hills by way of Sherman Summit up 
through the length, 150 miles, of the Laramie Plains, 
through the desert beyond (where another division 
point, the future town of Rawlins, was located, where 
Division Chief Percy Browne’s party, disorganized by 
two Indian attacks, was re-formed, and the Tom Bates 
half-dead party was succored), across the Wasatch 
Range to Salt Lake City, and by northward circle to 


the Wind River and the Sweetwater country of the 
152 


] 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


South Pass back to the outgoing trail in the Bitter 
Creek Desert again. 

General Rawlins and the two civilian Easterners 
enjoyed the experience thoroughly. The general bore 
an enthusiastic report to General Grant upon the heroic 
duties performed by the surveyors, laborers and all. 
He had had a first-hand experience. 

Meanwhile, along grade and track there were boom- 
ing days and nights. The company was taking the 
operation from the contractors. In the far East Oakes 
Ames, of the Crédit Mobilier, had engaged to construct 
the road for 667 miles west from the 247 mile-post at 
the rooth meridian. The sum agreed upon aggregated 
$47,000,000, comprised of sections of 100 miles at 
$42,000, $45,000, $80,000, $90,000 and $96,000 a mile, 
with 6 per cent. of the sidings and equipment to the 
amount of $7500 a mile where required. 

Oakes Ames personally assumed this financial task. 
From the tooth meridian the country was stigmatized 
as the “ rainless belt’; the lands thence onward were 
considered worthless and the company stock and securi- 
ties flattened alarmingly. Ames agreed to see to it that 
the track was built and to take payment in company 
securities at par; his the risk to place them at a profit 
or at a loss; his desire, he says, “to connect my name 
conspicuously with the greatest public work of the 
present century.” 

It was “ by no means strange that my credit with 
conservative financiers like Governor Washburn [Gen- 

153 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


eral C. C. Washburn, at that time congressman from 
Wisconsin, and in 1872 governor of the State] should 
have been shaken, and that he should have hastened to 
call in loans which, in his judgment, this contract 
proved to be in unsafe hands.” 

The 667 miles would carry the road across the Black 
Hills, across the great basin of the Red Desert and 
Bitter Creek country, to the Wasatch slope, short of 
the Salt Lake by but little more than 100 miles. The’ 
contract covered all the difficult line. It gave a distinct 
impetus to the unflagging activities from Omaha to the 
uttermost location stakes and vastly relieved the fears 
of the stockholders. To that there was added the cheer- 
ing report from the front, where the eastern base of 
the Rocky Mountains had been established as beginning 
just west of Cheyenne. 

The grade to Cheyenne was not exceeding thirty- 
five feet to the mile; from Cheyenne, 6000 feet eleva- 
tion, the road would climb to Sherman Summit of 
Evans Pass, thirty-two miles, elevation 8262 by the 
engineers’ figures, on an easy grade not exceeding 
ninety feet ; and down by open country and on through 
the rolling Laramie Plains would draw Government and 
company bonds of the $96,000 a mile. Evans Pass over 
the bugbear of the Black Hills was a natural highway, 
long waiting for the transcontinental rails. 

Coal beds had offered themselves to answer the fuel 
problem. Tie and bridge timber, and mountain streams 
down which they might be floated from the winter and 

154 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


summer camps to the line itself, bided in the frowning 
heights north and south and west. Upon the Black. 
Hills the grading would provide perfect ballast of dis- | 
integrated granite. 7 
By the middle of August end o’ track was out from 

Omaha 430 miles; the grade had been opened 100 miles 
before. The 125 miles of track had been laid in four 
months, despite a start hampered by a late spring and 
a progress impeded by successive freshets of the Mis- 
souri River that imposed an annoying barrier between 
the Nebraska and Iowa shores. Even in July great 
stores of iron and ties and other supplies were heaped 
up opposite Omaha awaiting ferriage. Out upon the 
rolling plains the march of the tracks was regulated 
only by the delivery of the material means. 

«Therefore the march had been spasmodic, but also 
spectacular. The grading gangs, flung forward 200° 
miles in advance, numbered 3500 men; the track con- 
struction crews numbered 450; the operating train force 
numbered 300. Nine saw-mills and several steamboats | 
were owned by the company. For sixty miles below | 
Omaha and 100 miles above the banks of the Missouri) 
River were being stripped of timber. Tie camps to 
employ thousands of choppers were being planned for 
the mountains. A machine shop costing $20,000 
had been opened at North Platte, in addition to the 
$250,000 shops at Omaha; the company was pre- 
pared to turn out twenty cars a week and take care of 
all its locomotives. 

155 


_—_-__ BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Already world’s records in track construction had | 
been broken by the march of two and one-half miles in ; 
one day and 150 miles in 100 consecutive days. The — 
East was awakening to the significance of the hail in 
the corridors of her hotels as the omnibuses clattered 
up: “ Passengers for the Pacific Railroad!” Interested 
travellers began to flock by Northwestern railroad and 
by ferry and ’bus into “ Train Town,” the Union Pa- 
cific suburb of Omaha, to view the miracle being 
achieved beyond where the sun sank in a Brierstadt 
canvas. The eager newspaper correspondent was out 
there, his pencil poised, his eyes roving, his ears thirsty. 

They all witnessed little General “Jack” Case- 
ment, “champion tracklayer of the continent,” hard | 
at work—ever at the fore, driving his doughty $2.50-a- 
day Irish, he as scrappy as the best of them. His was 
the contract for laying the track (1000 miles eventually 
became his stint) and he took over part of the grading 
as well when the section contractors failed in their jobs. 

It was a sight surprising. The snaky, undulating 
double row of glistening rails stretching on, on, on, into 
the west; the side-tracks filled with supply trains bear- 
ing hundreds of tons of iron and thousands of ties; the 
last terminal base, brimming with riotous life, grotesque 
with makeshift shacks and portable buildings, amidst 
which Casement Brothers’ huge take-down warehouse © 
with dining-room loomed portentous; then out to end — 
o’ track, a route impeded every few miles by more 


construction trains awaiting their turn; and at end o’ | 
156 q 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


track the boarding-train for the track gangs, of dining- 
cars, bunk-cars, the combined kitchen, stores-car and 
office-car, each eighty feet long, with beds made up atop 
and hammocks slung to braces and trucks underneath; 
the dusty line of wagons toiling still on and on, bearing 
ties, hay, what-not, up the interminable grade; on the 
grade, ant-like figures, delving, plowing, scraping, 
cursing; beside the grade, the “grader’s forts ”—of | 
dug-outs half beneath ground, roofed maybe with sheet- 
iron, sheltering two or four or six men apiece in time 
of Indian attack. The same kind of hut was used in 
the Wilderness and before Vicksburg. 

The boarding-train was shoved up-track by the 
engine at its rear. The first construction train pulled 
in, halted noisily, and dumped its thunderous load. The 
construction train backed out ; the boarding-train pulled 
out to clear the way for the charge of the iron-truck 
hauled by rope and galloping horse with a shrieking 
urchin astride. Forty rails were tossed aboard; the 
iron-truck rumbled full speed to end o’ track, passing 
another truck, tipped aside to give it right of way. The 
rail squads, five men to a squad, were waiting on right 
and left; two rails were simultaneously plucked free, 
-to the truck’s rollers, and hand after hand were run out | 
to the ties. “Down!” signalled the squad bosses, 
almost in one voice. The end of each rail was forced 
into its chair. The chief spiker was ready; the gauger 
stooped ; the sledges clanged—and another pair of rails 
had been set and the truck rolled forward over the pre- 

157 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


ceding pair, interrupting the busy hands of the bolters. 

Thirty seconds to each pair of rails; two rail lengths! 
to the minute, three blows to each spike, ten spikes to 
a rail, 400 rails and 4000 spikes and 12,000 blows to a 
mile. To every mile some 2500 ties—say 2400 at the 
outset, 2650 on the grades—at $2.50 each, delivered. 
The roadbed is ever calling for more and more; the six- 
and eight-horse or mule teams toil on from end o’ track 
with spoils from the immense tie-piles; in the moun- 
tains, the tie camps are heaping others by the thousands. 

The magnitude and precision of the undertaking 
awed beholders. The system reminded of the resistless 
march of the military ants of South America, or of a 
column of troops occupying a country. While in a 
June afternoon the correspondent for the Cincinnati 
Gazette gazed entranced, from one o'clock to four a 
mile and 200 feet of track was laid. During the sixty- 
mile run from North Platte the iron road had length- 
ened by another mile. This day there were over two 
miles of rails placed, ready for engine and cars. 

And military the work was, in its organization. 
The officials were generals, colonels, majors, by actual 
rank; captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and 
privates, ex-bluecoats and “ Galvanized Yanks” la- 
bored with transit, rod, chain, pick and bar and spade 
and sledge. General Casement’s track train “could — 
arm a thousand men at a word; and from him, as a 
head, down to his chief spiker it could be commanded 


by experienced officers of every rank, from general to 
158 : 


WESTWARD ACROSS THE PLAINS, 1866 


An excellent sketch of the Union Pacific R. R. in construction through N 
: Pawnees on guard. 
From Richardson's ‘‘Beyond the Mississippi” 


ebraska 


DEFENDING THE RAILS, 1867 
By Courtesy Union Pacific System 


ww Sl | 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


captain,” who had served five years at the front. Ata 
Plum Creek fracas the year before, General Dodge him- 
self led twenty train-men, strangers to him, to the 
rescue. “I gave the order to deploy as skirmishers, and 
at the command they went forward as steadily and in as 
good order as we have seen old soldiers climb the face 
of Kenesaw under fire.” 

End o’ track thrust forward, mile after mile, lung- 
ing farther and farther. The telegraph line kept pace 
with it; and all along the Platte there was presented 
the oddity of a telegraph line paralleling the river on 
either side, the Pacific or Overland line on the south, 
the Union Pacific railroad line on the north. The Ben 
Holladay stage line shortened: to Kearney, to North 
Platte, to Julesburg, and presently, in November, to 
Cheyenne, for the run to Denver, only 112 miles. The 
day of the Overland Stage on the plains was rapidly 
drawing to a close. Stages would still be necessary, 
but not for the long haul of 1900 miles between the 
Missouri River and California. 

On November 13 the tracks entered Cheyenne. The 
first passenger train from the East followed the next 
day. “The “‘ Magic City of the Plains ” had swarmed to 
. the welcome with banners, a brass band and speeches. 
President Sidney Dillon, of the Crédit Mobilier, and 
Champion Track-Layer Jack Casement replied. All 
Julesburg moved up to the new terminal, leaving a sta- 
tion house and a litter of cans to mark the site of a five- 
months’ town, faded in a night. 

159 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Five hundred and seventeen miles from Omaha! ? 
Eighty-seven miles of track laid in the three months. — 
Cheyenne was to be an important point as the junction — 
for Denver, from which the Denver Pacific was soon to 
build northward. Sidings and switches had to be put. 
in. It was a week before the main track again attacked 
the impatient grade. The real ascent of the Black Hills 
beckoned only fifteen miles below; to the summit was 
fifteen miles farther; then Fort Sanders, the goal of 
the year, waited only twenty odd miles over and down. 

But winter closed in early. They did not make it. © 
The accepted Evans location line to the summit was ¢ 
vetoed, upon advice of Consulting Engineer Seymour, | 
and this New York interference stopped the rails. De- 
cember caught them amidst cuts and curves at 8000 — 
feet, high up on the pass, and end o’ track halted short 
of the coveted summit by ten miles, and of Sanders, 
the 570 mile-post, thirty miles. 

The march of 1867, 240 miles; but well won. 

The year’s record of the Central was perused with 
interest. To the brag of the Union Pacific company | 
that it would reach the California border before the. 
Central reached the Nevada border, Superintendent’ 
Charles Crocker now responded with the promise: “A \ 
mile a day for every working day in 1868.” (i 

This stung. From Sherman Summit the Salt Lake — 
Valley itself was distant some 500 miles of desert and 
mountains. The Central Pacific had yet to build some 


600, mainly a straightaway across the desert. Its — 
160 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


mountains lay behind; they and winter had been 
conquered: the Union Pacific’s mountain work in the! 
snowy ranges lay ahead; the race looked to be in favo 

of the Central. 

Another matter also caused keen anxiety. That 
was the Mormon question. The Union Pacific surveys 
west of the Rocky Mountains had definitely decided 
that a route south of the Salt Lake, by way of Salt Lake 
City, and on up into the Humboldt country for the 
California border, was impracticable. True enough the 
Overland Stage ran by this route from the lake, and 
there was a great desire, of course, to enter the Mor- 
mon capital. But, although a number of surveys had 
covered the south end of the lake and beyond, the 
figures were altogether opposed by engineering judg- 
ment; whereas the one line projected north of the 
lake worked out perfectly. 

Brigham Young naturally would fight the decision 
withhis whole united people. He ruled in Utah; his 
was the rich storehouse of produce, the only one in the 
seventeen hundred miles between the Missouri and the 
Sierra. To the road which bent for his capital he would 
contribute the aid of all his moral power and all his 
material resources. Thus he could make or break. 
Opposed by him, a railroad would have a slow journey 
through his Territory. 

It was well known to the Union Pacific that the 
Central engineers, Clement and Ives, had been in- 


structed to run through surveys at the south and north 
II 161 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


ends of the lake. The filing of the Central’s engineer- 
ing report was awaited with exceeding apprehension. 
President Young already had announced that he stood 
prepared to furnish labor that would grade 200 miles 
east and west of the lake. 

When the Central’s report was filed the Union Pa- 
neers were even stronger than the Union Pacific engi- 
neers in recommending the route by the north end 
of the lake. 

President Young personally thundered at General 
Dodge in the Tabernacle. A protest from the Mormon 
church and Utah had gone forward to Washington. 
The Utah citizens had been prohibited from aiding the 
Union Pacific; they had been instructed to support the 
Central. As late as June of this year 1868 a mass- 
meeting was held in the Tabernacle to take measures 
to secure the transcontinental line for Salt Lake City, 
which had been one of the prime movers in the enter- 
prise. But when both roads, to their credit, stood firmly 
upon the recommendations of the engineers; and when 
the Government accepted the Central as well as the 
Union Pacific lines as plotted on the map, President 
Young swallowed his disappointment with as good 
grace as possible for any man, demonstrated his thrifty 
nature by making what profits he might for his church 
and people out of the grading and the supplies, and 
threw his forces into promoting the progress of the 


iron trail. In fact, had it not been for the Mormon 
162 


PROGRESS OF THE UNION PACIFIC 


graders the Union Pacific would have been beaten into 
Ogden by the Central. 

This winter General Dodge was called to New York 
for a conference of the heads of departments and the 
company officers. He received directions to start out 
at the earliest practicable moment and push the rails 
forward with all speed, regardless of expense. Time, 
time, time—that was the issue. Ogden must be won, 
and there still was the opportunity of striking so far 
toward the California border that when the two roads 
met the Union Pacific would control the traffic, and | 
the Central Company would be shut out from the Salt 
Lake Valley. : 

During the winter immense quantities of material 
and stores were accumulated at Cheyenne, the terminus. 
Tons upon tons of iron flowed in; the ties stacked high ; 
the Casement Brothers’ warehouse bulged with stuff. 
In the Black Hills 1000 men worked, cutting timber 
for other ties and for bridges, to be floated to the grade 
down the spring streams. A call for labor was sent 
out; an army of 10,000 Irish graders and track-layers 
gathered in Cheyenne; every train disgorged its rough- 
and-ready gangs. The surveyors were told to be pre- 
pared to set forth before spring opened. Four hun- 
dred and eighty miles of track, from Sherman to Ogden, 
were to be laid without a halt, and the location lines 
were to be run from Ogden to California, 600 miles 
farther, in readiness for the grade. 


The construction and equipment of the road to the 
163 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


close of 1867 approached $30,000,000 for the 540 


miles of track. The net earnings for the year figured at 
$2,061,000, a good proportion of this being the haulage 
of material and men for the contractors. Nevertheless 
the commercial business apart from the reduced-rates 
business was estimated at four times the operating 
expenses. Harper's Weekly was ‘predicting that in a 
short time “ the demands of trade will call for a second 
track, to be used exclusively as a freight road, over 
which an endless line of slowly-moving vans shall con- 
tinuously pass, leaving the other track for the use of 
impatient passengers only.” 

The price of rails delivered at Omaha had dropped 
from $135 a ton to $97.50 a ton. The rolling stock 
comprised fifty-three locomotives, nine first-class pas- 
senger cars and four second-class passenger cars—three 
of the former and all the latter having been built at 
the Omaha shops; and over 800 freight cars. 

There should not be omitted “ one officers’ car,” 
presumably the “Lincoln” car purchased from the 
Government last year ; and “ one president’s car,” being 
a brand-new creation in the ingenious George Pull- 
man’s best style, quite after the Vice-President Durant 
special taste. 

The road had been accepted within seven ils of 
Cheyenne. Civilization had followed end o’ track, for 
beside the road through the Episcopal diocese of 
Nebraska alone “ fourteen new churches had already 
been built in as many towns.” 


VI 
Tue RACE TO THE FINISH 


THE Union Pacific tracks rested upon Sherman 
Summit 540 miles out of Omaha; the grade, a broken 
line of reddish earthworks, extended thirty-five miles 
farther, down to the next base, Laramie City, three 
miles north of Fort Sanders. The survey of the engi- 
neers led on into the Laramie Plains; but here and on 
the high plateau of the bare divide west (the real Con- 
tinental Divide, although lower than Sherman Summit) 
and in the mystic Red Basin and the drear Bitter Creek 
country the Indians had cut wide gaps in the explorer’s 
trails. Thence across the snowy Wasatch Range to 
Ogden, and into the vast Great Basin of an ancient west- 
ern sea—the Utah and Nevada deserts—the surveys 
were only tentative. 

The company instructions to Chief Engineer Dodge 
bade him locate the line to Green River, 300 miles, by 
June 1; to the Salt Lake by fall, and before winter to 
have developed it west of the lake. He decided that 
this development should comprise actual location to 
Humboldt Wells, 220 miles beyond Ogden. In all, the 
location work mapped out by his plans summed over 
700 miles of line in eight months. 

Again the railroad was to part company with the 


stage, which had pursued it up the Platte and had 
105 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


jumped across country to meet it at Cheyenne. From 
the Laramie Plains the Overland Stage swung south- 
ward to the foothills that bordered the southern rim 
of the Red Basin and the Bitter Creek desert, for no 
horses could be expected to travel in harness amidst the 
desolate, bone-dry or poison-water expanse of this age- 
cursed mid-region—a region into which, as the trapper 
legend read, a jack-rabbit had to carry a canteen and 
haversack. But the transcontinental iron trail was 
plotted to traverse this flat, withered bosom of Nature, 
and by a short cut avoid the grades and the washes 
of the hills. 

In order, as he had promised, to strain every nerve 
to get the location work so far advanced in the spring 
as to be far out of reach of the construction corps, the 
chief engineer issued early marching orders to the 
survey crews. 

By date of February 1 Jacob Blickensderfer, Jr., 
received his instructions as chief of the Utah division 
to proceed into the field “at the earliest practicable 
moment ”—if possible, to begin location work March 1. 
With his party he left Omaha on February 26, crossed 
the Wasatch by sleds in snow above the tops of the 
telegraph poles, and arrived March 5. 

James A. Evans was appointed chief of the Laramie 
Division, to complete the location surveys from Laramie 
to the Green River and connect with the Blickensderfer 
men working east from the Salt Lake Valley. 


The spring was backward; the surveying parties 
166 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


fought snow and storm, lost animals and wagon equip- 
ment, and almost lost lives. 

At the last of April Vice-President Durant sent 
new and startling word to Chief Engineer Dodge, then 
in the field himself. 

The company desired “ to cover the road with men 
from Green River to Salt Lake within one month, 
and to Humboldt Wells in three!” That called for 
a location of the 700 miles by August—a job of eight 
months, short time at the best, concentrated into four 
and made final. 

The echoes of the thundering construction trains of 
the oncoming Central Pacific in western Nevada had 
reached the watchful ears of the Union Pacific New 
York office at 20 Nassau Street; bonds, Government 
and company, to the sum of $64,000 to the mile of 
track; land to the sum of 12,800 acres to each mile of 
track, had been hung up as a glittering prize of competi- 
tion. General Dodge delivered his opinion that the rush 
of construction work to Ogden could cost an extra 
$10,000,000 ; the company told him to go ahead on that 
understanding, and never mind. The Crédit Mobilier, 
backed by Oakes Ames, was listed to strain every nerve, 
as the engineers were straining every nerve; it had tot- 
tered before this; the race was to break Oakes Ames 
and imperil his great factory, now turning out 120,000 
dozens of shovels a year, and swapping them for rails 
and ties and human sweat. 


“Go ahead. The work shall not stop even if it takes 
167 


“BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


the shovel shop,” was his encouragement to the pioneers. 

“We do not take our hand off the throttle night 
or day until we know the front is supplied,” was the 
slogan of the operating department, whose devotion 
kept the material moving. 

There was to be no rest, summer or winter, on the 
long road to Ogden; neither heat nor cold, rain nor 
snow, level nor mountain, should halt the march of the 
rails, if muscle and steam and human will might open 
the way. Chief Dodge, astonished but not appalled, 
rearranged his parties as best he might, caught them 
by telegraph and messenger wherever he could, threw 
all his available force into the stretch of 400 miles be- 
tween Green River of Wyoming and Humboldt Wells 
of Nevada. The Evans survey from Laramie to the 
Green was almost completed,and the construction crews 
were free to press forward where the rows of stakes 
jutted, pin-heads in the immutable Red Desert. ; 

Preliminary lines were hardened into location lines, 
The best trail over the Wasatch was accepted, as en- 
dorsed by the lines already run eastward by the Central 
engineers. In his report to the company Chief Engi- 
neer Montague called attention to the fact that the 
Union Pacific adopted the Central surveys. Be that as 
it may, an engineer in the field is an engineer, and 
mathematics are mathematics. The entrance to Ogden 
by way of Echo Canyon and Weber Canyon proved 
to be the most feasible way. The surveyors and 


their chiefs worked feverishly. There was little oppor- 
168 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


tunity for revision or back-tracking. It is remark- 
able that such work stood the test of time, but it has 
been little altered. 

“TI do not hesitate to say that over half the number of 
miles of line was never located before in the same time 
by the same force—especially when it is remembered 
that the line between Green River and Salt Lake [the 
mountain portion] was difficult, requiring long and 
careful study,” declared General Dodge. “In Eastern 
States, with the same force, it would have been con- 
sidered a quick location if made inside of a year.” 

The actual work of the surveyors far outstripped 
the preparations of the grading contractors; out- 
stripped the preparations of the Mormons on the spot. 
When General Dodge passed over the line in July and 
August he found the grading camps idle, waiting on 
tools and supplies. By this time the engineering forces 
were running their lines from Ogden westward and 
from Humboldt Wells eastward. 

The Green River-Ogden division had been virtually 
completed. The project of crossing the northern arm 
of the Great Salt Lake (prophecy of that miracle of 
the Lucin Cutoff) had been abandoned, after numerous 
soundings and tabulations. The rcad must detour from 
Ogden to the north of the lake, and scale the abrupt 
Promontory Ridge. Beyond was that washboard, mud- 
lake basin, worthless as land but still yielding the mile- 
age subsidy reward of $64,000, and guaranteeing the 


mastery of the haul from coast to coast. 
169 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The anvil chorus of sledges was ringing again 
across the leagues between the foothills of the Sierra 
and the Black Hills. On April 1, while yet the ground 
was frozen too hard for the picks of the graders, the 
Union Pacific construction army had sallied from 
winter quarters in Cheyenne. At his office 1400 miles 
away (“probably the finest in New York, beautiful 
with paintings and statuary, and enlivened with the 
singing of birds,’ as admiring visitors related), Vice- 
President Durant sat as generalissimo over the advance 
of 12,000 toiling men. At the front General Jack Case- 
ment, another Crocker, raged by car and horse and 
foot up and down the earnest line, denouncing every- 
thing but work, work, work. At the base of supplies 
the Casement brothers’ warehouse launched a constant 
stream of material and Dan Casement taxed the capac- 
ity of eighty-foot freight-cars and six-horse teams. 

The Crédit Mobilier Company, borrowing funds 
and hypothecating securities, lashed by interest pay- 
ments rising to $500,000 a month, urged haste and ever 
haste to the meeting of the tracks and the winning of 
the gamble against time. Each added mile at the 
subsidy allowance was looked upon as eventual 
reimbursement for the excessive outlay upon the 
construction to Cheyenne. 

Owing to the lateness of the spring end o’ track was 
a month in reaching Laramie, “Gem City of the 
Plains,” at the 573 mile-post, twenty-three miles from 


Sherman Summit crest. But even at this a mile a day 
170 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


had been accomplished. The rails shot forward for 
another leg northwest through the easy Laramie 
Plains, favorite of the hunters white and red. The ante- 
lope fled from the clangor of the iron and the puffing 
of the engines. . 

In two months the terminus had moved at a stride 
120 miles farther, and founded Benton. Here on the 
eastern edge of the Red Desert a sprawling dust-coated 
town of 3000 thirsty haphazard people up-sprang, mush- 
room, in a fortnight, and hauled water three miles from 
the North Platte. The first frost of autumn seemed to 
wither it, and before snow it had vanished utterly. 

For end o’ track had again launched itself into the 
horizon. Two miles a day had been the clip from 
Laramie. Now the graders were working for 250 
miles in advance, distributed along the more difficult 
stretches clear into the mountains. There were 10,000 
of them, with 500 teams. From five to twenty miles 
ahead of the track the bridge and culvert gangs labored. | 
At end o’ track General Jack Casement was using the 
energies of 1000 track-layers and 100 teams. The 
supply teams, 300 and 400, plodded back and forth 
along the grade; the desert dust, red with the pulverized 
granite, white with soda and alkali, and blue with the 
fumes of the Irish dudeens, hung in a line 100 miles 
long. The racked desert gazed in wonder. 

Eastward stretched the connecting link of rails, 
attentuated to 700, 800 and finally 1000 miles. The 


construction trains, relaying the ammunition trans- 
17I 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY: 


ported from the far Missouri River, puffed in and out, 
pressing to the very pilot of the boarding-train and 
dumping their welcomed loads. Forty carloads of 
material to the mile was demanded, by single track 
from terminus, and by single track from Omaha itself. 
It was a feat. Never was such assault carried on with 
communication so slender. rab 

To the south might be glimpsed the dust from the 
overland stages at the base of the Medicine Bow range. 
That marked the old. In the desert had been born 
the new, with the shriek of the hurrying passenger 
trains dooming the old to ages that had passed. 

In the mountains themselves, to the south and to 
the west, the timber camps, employing crews of number 
unknown, under small contractors hacked and sawed 
and hewed, turning out ties and bridge timber; and 
these poured in a torrent down the mountain streams 
or by trails upon creaking wagons to meet the grade. 
Ties were costing, delivered, $1.20 each, in summer. 

The Casement brothers’ track-laying contract read : 
$800 a mile for anything less than two miles a day; for 
over two miles a day, $1200 a mile; for delays conse- 
quent upon an unfinished grade, $3000 a day. It is 
little marvel that the work speeded up; but the track 
gangs and the grader gangs were upon their mettle also. 

Laborers were drawing $3 a day. They were Irish, 
almost to a man; a fighting breed drawn from the East 
and by lure of good wages and steady work from the 


mining camps and the border towns of north and 
172 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


south. To be sure, 300 negroes had been employed 
and gave satisfaction. But the Union Pacific was 
built by the Irish. 

The Central had a working force equal in point of 
numbers, not equal in stamina. ’Twas the boast of) 
the U. P. men that one Irishman was worth three China- , / 
men. No better stuff could have been found for the 
Casement command with which to fight not only grim, 
relentless nature, but thirst, heat, cold, fatigue, and the 
scalping knife. All that the Irish asked was their pay 
and a boss who dealt no favors. Good stuff, yes; and 
tough stuff, of the knock-down-and-get-up type. 

In burning August the rails had swept across the 
Red Desert; they climbed the broad, bare plateau of 
the Continental Divide at 7164 feet, and charged on 
into the alkali dust of the Bitter Creek basin, abhorred 
by overland travellers. ‘Throughout 100 miles the 
water was poison rank with salt and alkali and scum, 
or altogether lacking. It foamed in the engine boilers 
and ate the stomachs of the men. Grading camps were 
taking what they could get, in barrels hauled by wagon 
and sixes from two to ten miles; when it arrived it was 
brackish. Tank trains plied between end o’ track and 
the last passable supply. There was no halt yet to 
bore wells and erect wind-mills. 

September 20 the track was at the 820 mile-post ; the 
Bitter Creek desolation had been flung to the rear. One 
hundred and twenty. miles again in two months—but 
two months of such work that the half has never yet 

173 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


been told. The average of two miles a day does not 
spell the answer that the graders and the track-layers 
delivered to the challenge of the deserts. For 630 miles, 
General Dodge remarks, the Union Pacific was built 
with no material at hand to aid it except the earth. 
Onward, even the earth proved antagonistic, 

The two-miles-a-day gait had not beef constant. 
Disposing of his 500 tons and 600 tons daily tossed 
at his feet as a tribute from the hands upon the throttle 
and the nervous figures bent over office desks, General 
Jack shoved his track into the very midst of the 
graders. He caught them, and while angrily tugging 
at his russet beard he drew his $3000 a day and waited. 
Then with a spurt he bridged the newly filled gap in the 
roadbed and tore on. Three miles in a day, four miles 
in a day, five miles in a day—he knew no limit except 
as grade and material failed. 

The press and people of the East were awakening 
to the miracle of railroad building being enacted in the 
West. The front pages of the metropolitan papers— 
the Tribune of Chicago and the exultant Greeley’s great 
Tribune of New York—the papers of Boston and Cin- 
cinnati and Washington—displayed the bulletin, in 
each issue: ‘‘ One and nine-tenths miles of track laid 
yesterday on the Union Pacific Railroad ” ; “ Two miles 
of track laid yesterday on the Union Pacific Railroad ”’ ; 
“ Two and three-quarters miles of track laid yesterday 
on the Union Pacific Railroad.” 

It was good advertising, and true. The travelling 

174 


GRADING OUTFITS 


GOING TO THE FORE, UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY, 1867 
By Courtesy of Union Pacific System 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


public flocked to see. They came and applauded. The 
summer and fall of this year was a new pilgrim season, 
with end o’ track as the Mecca. 

“It was worth the dust, the heat, the cinders, the 
hurrying ride day and night, the fatigue and the ex- 
posure, to see with one’s own eyes this second grand 
“March to the Sea.’ Sherman with his victorious 
legions sweeping from Atlanta to Savannah was a 
spectacle less glorious than this army of men march- 
ing on foot from Omaha to Sacramento, subduing un- 
known wildernesses, scaling unknown mountains, sur- 
mounting untried obstacles, and binding across the 
broad breast of America the iron emblem of modern 
progress and civilization.” 

The New York Sun, Tribune, Express, Times, Even- 
ing Mail, the Observer, the Christian Advocate, the 
Scientific American; the Boston Transcript, Journal, 
Traveller, Advertiser, Post, the Congregationalist; the 
Philadelphia Press, Inquirer, Age, Bulletin, North : 
American; the Pittsburgh Chronicle, the Cincinnati 
Enquirer and Commercial, the Baltimore American, 
the Chicago Journal of Commerce—they and an- 
other hastened to gain first-hand information of 
the campaign now in full swing to cleave a way into 
the Golden West. 

This July General Grant himself, lately acting Sec- 
retary of War and now the unanimously nominated 
Republican candidate for the Presidency, had come out, 
accompanied by a distinguished retinue—Generals Sher- 

175 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


man, Sheridan, Dent, Harney, August Kautz, Company 
Vice-President Durant, Director Sidney Dillon, and so 

forth. They made headquarters at Sanders, and were 

heartily hailed by all the old soldiers along the line as 

they proceeded by the special train to end o’ track. 

And still other visitors there were: sportsmen and 
civilian and army friends of General Casement and 
General Dodge. They lodged at end o’ track and in 
the graders’ camps beyond, and in the tie camps 
of the mountains. 

The Union Pacific crews were in close rivalry with 
the Central crews; the Overland telegraph wires con- 
nected, and flashed news between the East and West, 
between New York and Placerville and Sacramento. 
From the Overland wires it might be relayed to the) 
company’s wires. 

In defiance of the Central’s best endeavors the Case- 
ment track gang laid six miles of track in one day from 
rise to set of sun. The Central accepted the gage, and 
“ Crocker’s pets” retorted with seven miles. General 
Casement and his rugged Irish laughed. They had 
other tricks up their sleeve. 

* No damned Chinamen can beat me ‘swans rails,” 
said Jack Casement. 

At Granger, in late October, General Casement had 
as his camp guests General J. M. Corse, of lowa; 
Edward Creighton, of Omaha, who had strung the 
Pacific telegraph with as much expedition as the Union 


Pacific tracks were being laid, and others. It had been 
176 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


a gala night—there are reports which state that the 
doughty little general himself was rather the worse for 
wear in the morning; and on this day the “ Case- 
ment tarriers ” were booked to step on the tails of the 
Central Chinks. 

Before the eyes of the guests seven and a half miles 
of track, less a few rail-lengths, were put down before 
the bosses finally bawled, “‘ Lay off!” In the dusk the 
men quit, well satisfied. General Casement vowed that 
the next stint should be eight miles, if Crocker did not 
cry enough. 

Crocker replied: “‘ The Central promises ten miles ~~ 
in one working day.” And he added, to himself: “ But 
we will take our time to it.” 

When Vice-President Durant received the word off 
the wire, at New York, he was prompt to call: 

“Ten thousand dollars that you can’t do it before _-— 
witnesses.” 

“We'll notify you,” Crocker answered coolly. 

Green River, by first company orders only the engi- 
neering goal for June, had been left as a division station 
of the completed road in September; the pace set from 
the 820 mile-post had been over two miles a day, includ- 
ing the idle Sundays. To the “ roaring” terminal base 
town of Bryan, thirteen and one-half miles farther, was 
the matter of a short week; and out of Granger, sixteen 
miles beyond, the track had leaped almost eight miles | 
at a bound into the Utah Territory of 1868. 

Little time was being spent in ballasting the ties. 

1a 177 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


They were laid upon the clods turned by the graders’ 
plows and picks, and the rails passed over. Scant atten- 
tion was being paid to whether or no the rail joints 
measured with the ties, or hung between. No masonry 
was attempted; wood hewn to stock measure was 
quicker for trestles, drains and abutments. The sting 
of winter was in the frosty nights, and the-first snows 
were whitening the crest of the Wasatch, before. As 
Government Director Jesse Williams, himself an engi- 
neer, pointed out: “ The first object in railroad con- 
struction is, very properly, to lay the rails,” so as to 
provide for the transportation of material. 

This was being done in the race to daunt the threat- 
ening voice of time with the staccato of the sledges. 

The Overland Stage road still wended in the south. 
The venerable Colonel “‘ Dick” Carter, courtly Vir- 
ginian, in vain had tried to have the iron trail follow 
through by way of his suzerainty of old Bridger’s Fort. 
Deaf to his solicitations, the rails swept by eleven miles 
north, and dropped him his station of Carter as a 
memento. The company orders had bade the engineers. 
run their lines according to the best engineering judg- 
ment, regardless of cost or of solicitations. Having 
declined Denver and Salt Lake, the tracks turned 
Bridger’s Overland post down also. Even Bridger’s 
Pass was deemed unavailable. 

At Piedmont the rails were atop the Uintah chain 
of the northern Wasatch; and here squatted the great 


stacks of ties, floated down the streams and gathered at 
178 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


Tie Siding; ninety cents to $1.20 apiece, but with an 
overhead to the contractors for hauling. 

The Oakes Ames $47,000,000 contract in behalf of 
the Crédit Mobilier had ended—and the Crédit Mo- 
bilier and Oakes Ames were almost ended, too. 

Haliway between Carter and Piedmont General 
Dodge took charge of the contracts, for the company. 
Relief for General Casement likewise was close at hand. 
On the long trail out from the Laramie Plains numerous 
of the sub-contractors had fallen under the pressure of 
their grading jobs. Time and again the Casement re- 
serves had been hustled forward to fill the gaps. But 
now, replacing the plains and desert ditty: 


Drill, my paddies, drill! 
Drill, you tarriers, drill! 
Oh, it’s work all day, 
No sugar in your tay— 
Workin’ on th’ U. Pay Ra-ailway! 


a new chantey was reverberating amidst the granite 
walls before: 


At the head of great Echo the railway’s begun, 
The Mormons are cutting and grading like fun; 
They say they'll stick to it until it’s complete— 
When friends and relations they’re hoping to meet. 


Hurrah, hurrah, the railroad’s begun, 
Three cheers for the contractor; his name’s Brigham 
Young. 
Hurrah, hurrah, we’re honest and true, 
And if we stick to it, it’s bound to go through. 
179 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY _ 


Now there’s Mr. Reed, he’s a gentleman too— 

He knows very well what the Mormons can do. 
He knows they will earn every cent of their pay, 
And are just the right boys to construct a railway. 

Solicited by the popular superintendent, Sam Reed, 
and encouraged by the mandate of President Brigham 
Young, the sturdy Utah men and boys had _ flocked with 
pick and spade and wheelbarrow and cart to open the 
grade from the Wasatch into the Promised Land. 
President Young himself, of business tendencies, had 
taken the major contract, at $2,000,000, to grade from 
the head of Echo Canyon 120 miles to Promontory 
Summit. At the completion of the road the company 
owed him $1,000,000. He gained a settlement (after 
his manner in such things) by direct appeal to New 
York and acceptance, as part payment, of $600,000 in 
left-over equipment, for his Utah Central Railroad. 

Swarming to the summons of bishop sub-contrac- 
tors, the workers, old and young, of the thrifty Beehive 
community lay to. With $10 a day and keep for man 
and ox-team, with man and boy power ranging to $3, 
and more a day, with hay at $100 a ton and potatoes 
$7 a bushel, and nothing small despised, Utah, long 
shut off from the world, reaped a golden harvest. 

As an Ogden veteran of the day states: .“ It was 
there that I laid the foundation for a competency.” 

All in all, the Mormon grades carried the Union 
Pacific through the last 150 miles, and got it to Prom- 


ontory in time. 
180 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


At Aspen, the 937 mile-post, nine and one-half 


| miles beyond Piedmont, the rails were again high in air: 


7540 feet, an elevation second only to Sherman Summit 
of the Black Hills. 
It was late November. Upon the heights winter 


_ was marshaling its snow and cold as an army of occu- 


pation. The advance already had possessed the weighted 
pines and denuded the feebler aspens; the grade was 
beleaguered by ambush—the white-clad soldiers had 
arrived in millions. In close touch with the stage once 
more, the rails plunged down for the Wasatch passes, 


_ thirty miles before; struck the Bear River and waiting 


Bear River City, of unsavory reputation; crossed on a 
trestle 600 feet long, advanced through the Wasatch 
pass, 1000 feet lower than Aspen, toiled through the 
Evanston coal depot (named for James Evans, late 
division engineer), where the snow was climbing for 
the eaves of the clustered shacks and staggering on, 
hard beset, with the end of the year established winter 
terminus at the rude haven of Wasatch, 966 miles 
from Omaha and a mile and a quarter in air. 

Track record of the eight months, 425 miles and 
100 miles of sidings. Track accepted, 940 miles out of 
the 966. Operating expenses, a jump from $1,400,000 
to $4,160,000 out of $5,062,000 earnings. The year’s 
construction account, $56,290,000; the $10,000,000 
chargeable to rush had been absorbed. Ogden was 
sixty-five miles. The Central ? 


Charles Crocker had made good his promise of a 
181 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


mile a day. Three hundred and sixty-three miles was 
the record of the Central; its end o’ track was now 245 
miles west of Ogden, only twenty-five miles short of 
that U. P. goal of Humboldt Wells, and still coming 
amidst the snowless desert. Its graders had far passed 
the U. P. graders, desperately advanced 220 miles 
beyond Ogden to claim the right of way; they were 
forging for Promontory and Ogden, and threatening 
the passes of the Wasatch, where the C. P. engineers 
had set the line stakes. 

When at the close of 1867 the Central Pacific track 
had crossed the California~-Nevada line, and the spring 
energies were to be centred upon the Donner Gap of 
seven miles behind, the construction firm of Charles 
Crocker was exhausted financially, if not physically. 
The outlay and difficulties had been extraordinary. 

The Contract and Finance Company had come to 
the rescue. Emulating the example of the Union Pa- 
cific’s Crédit Mobilier, it had been organized and duly 
incorporated by the four builders and Edwin B. 
Crocker, the road’s attorney, to carry on the construc- 
tion work. From New York Vice-President Collis 
P. Huntington telegraphed his famous dispatch to his 
representative, “Uncle”? Mark Hopkins, regarding 
the stock: “Take as little as you can and as much 
as you must.” 

The new company engaged to build and equip the 
road from the State line through to the Salt Lake for 


$43,000 a mile cash and an equal payment in Central 
182 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


stock. At the completion of the line the four prin- 
cipals held some $52,000,000 in company stock and had 
assumed between three and four millions of company 
debt. But the road was there. 

From the State border at Camp 24 to Ogden was 
600 miles. On May 1 the Central tracks entered Reno, 
sixteen miles. From a population of two men, one 
woman, three pigs and a cow Reno expanded to fill 
thirty new buildings in a week. The Jonah’s gourd 
miracle of the eastern plains and deserts was being 
repeated here upon the far western deserts; but the 
Central had not struck its stride for the year. 

“A mile a day in the desert,” had been Superin- 
tendent Crocker’s pronunciamento. 

“ Durant has started for the Pacific Ocean. We'll 
strain every nerve to get into Salt Lake and secure a 
portion of the business,” had asserted Mr. Huntington. 

The company had about the same force as when in 
the mountains; the 10,000 Chinese laborers and 


mechanics, the 2000 whites, mainly Irish. Inearly July 


the tracks issued from the lush Truckee Meadows (that 
welcome resting-spot of the desert-worn overlanders) 
by way of the lower Truckee Canyon, on July 9 crossed 
the Truckee, and a mile beyond founded Wadsworth, 
thirty-five miles from Reno. 

The horses and mules had cropped the last green 
grass that they would see, save at the borders of the 
stagnant sinks and the infrequent springs, for 100 


miles. From here eastward stretched the alkali Nevada. 
183 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Desert, and then the Utah Desert: all a rock-ribbed, 
stinking-lake, bitter-shrub region, with the main water 
supply that of the deceitful Humboldt, and with only 
the emigrant stations in all the 500 miles of route be- 
tween the Truckee and the Salt Lake. 

The Chinamen called for soldiers: Indians lurked 


yonder in the solemn vista of shimmering soda and 
isolated peaks, white labor of Nevada was rising against 
the invasion by the yellow. Such rumors tried the 
hearts of the chattering Mongolian phalanx. At the 
request of the governor of Nevada the scouting cav- 
alry came. But the Indian scare died, the white mili- 
tants were left behind; “ Crocker’s pets” shuffled on 
with pick and shovel, sledge and rail. 

Crocker himself called for material and set himself 
to the desert job. From the survey word had returned 
of difficult country ahead. At the Humboldt there 
awaited three canyons. He loaded 3000 graders into 
wagons and sent them forward 250 miles, with 400 
animals, to dig and blast through the Palisades. 

Fifteen-Mile Canyon was graded in six weeks. Five- 
Mile Canyon was graded in three weeks. Twelve-Mile 
Canyon, 800 feet deep, through which no hoof nor 
sole had ever pressed, likewise was open and ready 
when the rails arrived. 

President Stanford crossed to Salt Lake City by 
stage and contracted with the Brigham Young legion 
to lend their aid. Work was begun to grade 160 miles 
west from Ogden and meet the incoming rails. A car- 

184 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


load of tools was forwarded, at thirteen cents a pound, 
from end o’ track by freighter outfits to Salt Lake, and 
thence at two cents a pound north to the line of grade. 

Across the desert to the Palisades toiled the long, 
dusty files of supply wagons drawn by panting, 
stumbling mules; from Union Pacific terminus, 400 
miles in the east, there rolled into the Salt Lake Valley 
countless sacks of Iowa corn for the famished nags of 
_the Central’s Utah section. The Utah native oats were 
fourteen cents a pound; $6 a pound was paid for the 
native hay; water was being piped eight miles and 
hauled eighty-four miles; while in between the Pali- 
sades and the westward-working grade at Ogden, Union 
Pacific stakes up-jutted and the Union Pacific Irish had 
penetrated to Humboldt Wells. 

Crocker had called for material, The East was 
being combed to answer him. Thirty vessels at one 
time were en route from New York bearing the precious 
iron. The ties, redwood, pine and cedar, were flowing 
down the slopes of the Sierra. The desert country fur- 
nished nothing. For 500 miles there was not a tree of 
size sufficient to make a board, nor a stone that could be 
used in a permanent foundation. The fuel timber did 
not exceed a few cords of scrub pine and juniper. 

The Central, pushing northward through a drear 
land uninhabited and apparently uninhabitable, had en- 
tirely cut loose from its base. But the 500 and 600 
tons of ammunition a day needs must keep up with the 
onward march. The price of ties mounted from two to 

185 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


eight dollars each, for quick delivery by skid-way and 
wagon and steam from parent trees felled, some of 
them 600 miles to rear. Speed was the word. 

So the slumberous Nevada desert, hitherto dis- 
turbed only by the emigrants upon the Humboldt trail 
through its middle and the stages across its south, wit- 
nessed an awakening sight akin to the sight at the same 
time disturbing the solitudes of the Wyoming basins. 

Here advanced the army of a new race. First the 
pioneers, the sappers, opening the way with the oldest 
civilization extant—the patient Orient, directed by the 
Occident. Then followed the army of conquest, white 
and yellow mingled, conducted by the masterful Cau- 
casian with all the energies of a world before unknown 
and unsuspected. And California, thoroughly aroused 
to the full import of that unwonted stir just beyond her 
borders, delegated her scouts to see and glorify. 

From his end o’ track headquarters of travelling 
office, storeroom, bunk-cars, dining-car and repair- 
shops, at dawn each morning Superintendent Stro- 
bridge sent forth his orders for the day. The thin air 
was blue with the wood smoke from the track-force 
tents and shacks where the mess cooks prepared the 
breakfasts. The assistant superintendents and chief 
bosses galloped hither-thither, arraying the men. The 
movable blacksmith shop and the accompanying harness 
shop opened for the day to perform their never-ended 
tasks of hammering, rasping, cutting, stitching. Be- 


hind, until merged in the purple distance, stretched the 
186 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


long double line of rails, and the equally long single 
line of poles strung with the wire which at the fore 
dropped sharply from the last pole into the telegraph 
office of the camp train. Into the brightening eastern 
sky ran the low ridge of freshly upturned desert soil, 
a waiting trail, with myriad blue-bloused figures squat- 
ting around their camp-fires beside its course. 

The supply train, a double-header of twenty or 
thirty cars, was close at the tail of the camp train. The 
work of the day began promptly at sunrise. The iron 
and ties were unloaded upon wagons, which hauled 
them around the camp train, to be reloaded upon the 
trucks drawn by horses. The coolies grabbed the ties, 
dropped them seven to the rail-length; the rail gangs 
dropped the rails, the spike men, bolt men and fastener 
men ran, distributing their booty, the spikers and bolters 
sprang with sledges and wrenches. The truck moved on 
until emptied, when it was thrown upon its side and 
the fresh truck passed. 

On the right, the telegraph poles kept pace, and from 
the wire wagon the wire unreeled. In the telegraph 
office of the camp train the sounder clicked, signalling 
for more, more, and ever more. 

‘All this system differed little from the Union Pa- 


cific system, except that the murmur of the Chinamen — 


was a contrast to the jovial quip and banter and the 
hearty language of the exuberant Irish in the east. 
Only every other tie was placed for the rails; but 


a follow-up gang pursued, inserting the odd ties. The 
187 


x, 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


camp train regularly cut down the distance for the 

following supply train; brought dinner at noon, and at 
- evening moved in to its station at end o’ track with 
supper and to connect to the telegraph. 

Thus, out of the first thirty-five miles of arid desert, 
paralleling the California emigrant trail but separated 
from it by the river, from the sinks of the Carson and 
of the Humboldt the Central Pacific marched up the 
south side of the crooked, tantalizing Humboldt and 
sowed the desert as it went. Fungus growths, strangely 
named, flourished in its wake; Oreana, Winnemucca, 
Golconda, Shoshone, Beowawe, Cluro—where descend- 
ing the massy Cortez Range the exhausted emigrants 
rested in the meadow bottoms for the travail westward 
to the Land of Gold. 

The hurrying tracks crossed the river ; the Palisades 
gateway through the barring lava walls was ready and 
opened. From the Palisades’ three canyons the rails 
emerged to establish Carlin as division headquarters. 

Date, December 20; march from the California 
border, upwards of 300 miles; from Sacramento, the 
base of supplies, 444 miles, of which 330 had been ac-. 
cepted ; distance from Ogden, 300 miles. The iron trail 
again thrust forward, whipping like a lash laid along 
the tortuous river; founded Elko, the desert prospec- 
tors’ base for the White Pine txeasure-house of the 
cunning Paiutes; and at end of the year was within 
quick striking distance of that Humboldt Wells emi- 
grant station which the Union Pacific had vainly 


claimed for outpost. 
188 


oy 


BUILDING THROUGH THE FOREST 
Central Pacific R. R., Sierra Nevada Mountains, 1864 


BUILDING THE TELEGRAPH LINE 
Central Pacific R. R., Humboldt Desert, 1868 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


The year’s record, 363 miles of track; construction 
expense, $22,350,000; net earnings increased from 
$1,055,000 to $1,271,700; operating expenses increased 
from $378,600 to $680,900. Rails were down to $75 
the ton delivered at Sacramento, but locomotives were 
being entered at $11,000 each, passenger cars at $3500, 
flat-cars at $600. 

Between the Central end o’ track and the Union 
Pacific end o’ track there intervened 300 miles of desert 
and mountain and valley unoccupied save by the rival 
graders now competing, west-bound and east-bound, 
side by side. But from Humboldt Wells the Union 
Pacific tracks were separated by 275 miles; they would 
never make it. The Central might cover its space in a 
fortnight—and race in for the Salt Lake Valley, to 
meet not alone the Union Pacific but its own oncoming 
grade from Ogden. Once around the East Humboldt 
Range at Wells, and there was open going to the Prom- 
ontory Range north of the Salt Lake. 

The Central construction corps saw its opportunity 
and made the most of it. It had the advantage of posi- 
tion; it held the comparatively snowless lowlands while 
the Union Pacific was battling with the timbered 
heights. The nights were cold—the graders blasted the 
frozen earth like granite; the winter winds blew 
fiercely ; but the track advanced. It leaped to the coveted 
Wells; the brogans of the laborers and the hoofs of the 
gaunt horses were crushing the location ‘stakes of the 


Union Pacific surveyors. From here onward to Ogden 
189 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


was debated ground. In the estimation of Assistant 
Engineer Lewis Clement, the U. P. engineers had run 
the better line—but a line was not a track. 

The Central had builded well, with an eye to the 
ultimate tussle. From rear the supplies streamed in 
steady current. Twenty-three miles, thirteen of them 
continuous, out of a final thirty-seven at~a cost of 
$2,000,000 across the summit. of the Sierra Nevada 
were being protected by snow-sheds and galleries ; 2500 
men and six construction trains were fighting snow, to 
keep the road open and cheer on the front 600 miles 
eastward with the long convoys of ammunition. For 
if the line of communication failed, the Crocker army 
in mid-desert was lost. The Sierra line was blocked 
only two weeks. | 

Now surrounded in the Wasatch, there upon the 
high divide between the waters of the Bear and the 
Weber, almost at the Promised Land but not quite, the 
Union Pacific was experiencing all the rigors of the 
Central’s Sierra without the Central’s prevision. Winter 
enfolded deep and deeper, burying shack and tent and 
grade; behind, 200 miles of track at a time were put 
out of commission when the blizzards swept the Lara- 
mie Plains; for weeks at a time neither supplies nor 
material moved forward ; during three months the co- 
struction force fought doggedly, cut off, and tortured 
by the delays and by the thought that the Central was 
forging on. 

The work continued. Those were the orders: work 

190 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


all winter, as all summer and fall. Thaws succeeded 
freezes, but the snow had gathered twenty feet, and the 
grade, shovelled partially bare, was a white-walled 
galley. To descend from the divide into Echo Canyon, 
a tunnel of 770 feet, approached by two lofty trestles of 
230 feet and 450 feet, was necessary, or the grade would 
touch the 116-foot limit. The hard-frozen red clay and 
sandstone required nitroglycerin, and called for an 
expense of $3.50 a yard. But Dodge, Casement, As- 
sistant Superintendent James Evans, and all, could not 
wait upon the tunnel. 

By a zigzag temporary route named the “ Z,” of 
ten miles, the track circumvented the tunnel, and thus 
material was shunted down. The rails could not wait 
for the clearing of the grade either ; they were laid upon 
the ice and glaring snow—a whole train, from engine 
to caboose, slid sidewise into the canyon’s bottom, 
carrying with it iron and ties. 

The tracks sought the canyon bottom; and here the 
mushy ground yielded until crowbars were used to 
steady the superstructure while the construction train 
crept over. 

The track-men stuck, but they demanded $3.50 a 
day; so did the company graders; they got it. Sunday ~ 
was forgotten, except in doubled price. The Mormon 
workers at $5 a day to man and team required their $10 
on Sunday. It was given, and earned. Where sub- 
contractors dodged the spring-sinks and the heavy cuts, 
Casement flung his tireless Irish into the breach. 

191 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY | 
| 
| 
| 


Vice-President Huntington of the Central rode — 
through by stage and rail. He witnessed the struggle — 
—perhaps grimly smiled, for he knew the Sierra of | 
California and the Wasatch both. | 

“TI met some teams with ties in the Wasatch Moun- 
tains and I asked what the price was. They said $1.75 
each. They had seven ties on the wagon, I asked 
where they were hauled from, and they said from a 
certain canyon. They said it took three days to get 
a load up to the top of the Wasatch, Mountains and : 
get back to their work. I asked them what they had a 
day for their teams, and they said $10. This would — 
make the cost of each tie more than $6. I passed back — 
that way in the night in January, and I saw a large 
fire burning near the Wasatch summit, and I stopped — 
to look at it. They had, I think, from twenty to 

ently five ties burning. They said it was so fear-— 
fully cold they could not stand it without having a_ 
fire to warm themselves.” i 

This winter contest, waged unrelaxing and after | 
the mélée of summer and fall, brought another extra _ 
expense of $10,000,000 to top the $15,600,000 of the | 
last contract. 

“No one can obtain at this time an intelligent idea 
of the difficulties met with and overcome; to appreciate 
them one had to be present and witness the work,” as- 
serted General Dodge in his closing report. And he 
supplemented, later, in the simply spoken words: ‘“‘ Men 
who went out in the morning with overcoats on, and 

192 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


would have to work with overcoats on all day, were not 
able to do very large days’ works.” 

The spectacular defile of Echo Canyon was put 
behind ; in late January the first engine roared past the 
lone pine, within the portals of Weber Canyon, which 
displayed the rudely lettered sign “ 1000 Miles.” One 
thousand miles from Omaha—hooray! 

But this was no token of breathing-spot. From 
Ogden the affable Superintendent Sam Reed, in charge 
of the work west, had launched the grading column for 
Humboldt Wells, 220 miles, and was dispatching mate- 
rial for eighty miles of track to be built eastward from 
the Wells; the Mormon gangs were attacking the grade 
to Promontory Point; and along this grade the rails 
from Ogden should hasten westward before the Central 
_ might drive the spikes in its own gap. 

And sudden alarm spurred. From New York Vice- 
President Huntington had sent word back to his Cen- 
tral not to be concerned over the presence of the Union 
Pacific people in the Humboldt Valley—to come right 
on as fast as possible, “ and leave a good road behind.” 
Forthwith, up Weber Canyon and up Echo Canyon 
there were strung the Central’s Mormons to grade upon 
the Central survey ; and in Washington there was filed ~. 
the Central’s map, claiming the right of way to the 
head of Echo, and the advance bonds upon this sixty 
miles! The smartness of the great Huntington must 
be acknowledged. 

It did not matter that the Central track was still 

13 193 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


~ 100 miles west of Ogden, and that the Union Pacific” 
with only twenty-five miles to go, had virtually won 
the race into the Salt Lake Valley. On the last day 


of President Johnson’s administration the bonds, in 
amount of $1,333,000, were issued; but on the same 
day, March 3, the U. P. rails entered Ogden. 


Beginning at eleven o’clock in the morning, from 


hill and housetop and upper-story window the glad 


town watched the engine-smoke, rising like a signal of 


succor for a hard-put garrison. And indeed Utah had 


been sorely isolated through many years. 


“ About 2:30 p. m. they [the track-layers] steamed 
into Ogden.” Flags: waved, the military brass band 
blared, the Captain Wadsworth artillery boomed, and > 
a parade bore the banner: “ Hail to the highway of 


nations! Utah bids you welcome.” 

For some months the American press and people 
had been speculating upon the final outcome of this 
frantic scrambling race westward and eastward, that 
seemed to regard neither men nor money, except in 
bulk. And this February the Secretary of the Interior, 


replying to a query from the House, had sought to solve - 
the problem by suggesting: ‘‘ The point of junction has — 


been assumed to be 78.295 miles east of Salt Lake City, 
or at a point that will entitle the two companies to an 
equal amount of bonds.” 

This was futile bargaining. The two roads were in 
no mood for listening to decimals—the Union Pacific 


already had passed the 78.295-mile mark, and now 


104 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


Ogden had been won despite the desperate coup de main | 
of the wily Huntington. The route to California and. 
the stretch to Humboldt Wells had been lost—that also 
was a foregone conclusion. But to reach out as far as 
possible from Ogden and shut the Central off com-, 
pletely the Union Pacific recalled all its graders from ’ 
the Nevada desert and centred its efforts upon building 
into the immediate west. 

Like the massed spectators in the grandstand of a 
race-course, a nation stood tiptoe to see the straining 
thoroughbreds finish their last relay, seven years ahead 
of the official bookmakers’ time for the field. 

Working night and day shifts the Union Pacific 
headed out into the northwest up along the lake, to 
swing westward and climb the bold ridge to Promon- 
tory Summit. This, “ 600 feet high, with scarcely four 
miles of direct ascent from the east,” was void of 
natural ravine or water course, and was approached by 
way of treacherous mud-flats and curving trestles and 
switch-backs for an 80 per cent. grade. 

The grading had been only a month in progress. 
The construction in the fiercely contesting mountains | 
had dwarfed that upon the flats below. For once the 
Union Pacific was caught short. Again the cost of 
speed mounted high. This was not contract work—it 
was work that the contractors had skipped as a money 
loser ; Dodge and Casement and Reed and Evans took 
command in behalf of the company, and “ without re- 
gard to economy.” ’Twas no time to talk figures; the 

195 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


_ shrieks of the Central’s engines might almost be heard; 
the Central’s graders were connecting up with Ogden. 

Here where 800,000 yards of excavation had cost 
by contract $623,000, 178,000 yards were costing 
$618,000 by the day-and-night system. 

“ Save the credit of the road—tI will fail, ” Oakes 
Ames had written, in authorizing the staggering sums 
called for all the way from Piedmont. And means for 
the moment seemed to come somehow. 

Across the desert west of Promontory the Central 
limped gamely in, mile after mile. Crocker and Stro- 
bridge were driven frantic by the wreck of an iron-train 
plunging through a trestle. They were held up by lack 
of rails when every minute of wasted time was madden- 
ing. Smallpox devastated their camps. They worked 
their Chinamen by light of sage-brush bonfires, to make 
up, and the track lengthened in the night. Of their 
650 miles 200 more had been approved, raising the 
total to 530. 

Between Promontory and Ogden their graders and 
the Union Pacific graders were delving in parallel 
lines, frequently within rock-roll of each other. The 
westward-facing Irish gazed at the eastward-facing 
Chinks and laughed. ’Twas too much for the blood of 
Erin—this Mongolian host taking white men’s wages. 
And the Paddies laid a “ grave ””»—a blast that buried 
several Chinamen and sent others squeaking and scur- 
rying. Twice this was done, to the huge delight of the 

196 t 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


_ Murphys and the O’Briens and the Sullivans and all the 
- flannel-shirted, two-fisted crew. 

Remonstrance from the Central aces to, the Uy Bs 
bosses and orders from General Dodge himself had no | 
effect upon the Irish graders. Whereat the Chinamen, 

in surprising self-defense, laid a grave of their own, 
directly above the Union Pacific grade. It was a suc- | 

_ cessful grave—killed two or three Irishmen and injured 

_ @thers. This tit-for-tat ended the physical hostilities; 

_ the sport was growing too dangerous. 

For a month the contest to indefinite goals waged ° 
hotly. The Union Pacific had the more difficult leg to 
- the Summit; the ascent from the west was not difficult. 
The Union’s track-layers were clanging their rails upon 
the very heels of the pick-and-shovel men and the 
trestle builders. On March 28 the terminal base of 
Corinne, twenty-eight miles from Ogden, was located; 
the rate of advance had averaged a mile a day despite 
the obstacles; but the Central, fifty miles out on the 
desert, was doing as well if not better. 

At the graders’ camp of Blue Creek, eighteen miles 
on, under the shadow of the beetling Promontory ridge, 
the end had been declared. For 220 miles from Ogden, | 
or to Humboldt Wells in Nevada, with the exception 
of the partially closed gap from Blue Creek to the top, 
ten miles, the Union Pacific grade skirted the Central 
Pacific grade, upon almost eighty miles into the Wells | 
the Union Pacific rails had been hastily laid. The 
Union Pacific survey extended to the California line— 

197 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


and there were rumors that California interests still 
hostile to the Central had invited the rival road to enter 
California by Beckwith Pass of the Sierra Nevada 
to the north. 

East from Ogden ten miles to the mouth of Weber 


Canyon the Central grade was opened, the projected 


division to the head of Echo Canyon, fifty-five miles — 


farther, had been endorsed by Government payment, 
and the survey had been run across the Wasatch. 
Both companies were weary but stubborn, and the 
people of the United States had incited them to astonish 
all nations by speed toward the completion of the first 
transcontinental. The lines met, mathematically, no- 
where. The Union Pacific had bagged Ogden and the 
Salt Lake trade, and with an empty treasury was agree- 
able to overtures. A compromise between Vice-Presi- 
dent Huntington and Vice-President Durant was 
reached upon advices from the engineering chiefs. Con- 
gress forthwith ratified it in decree of April 10: 
“ That the common terminus of the Union Pacific 
and the Central Pacific Railroads shall be at or near 
Ogden; and the Union Pacific Railroad Company shall 
build, and the Central Pacific Railroad Company shall 
/pay for and own, the railroad from the terminus afore- 
‘said to Promontory Point, at which point the rails 
| shall meet and connect and form one continuous line.” 
Upon this careful wording “at or near Ogden” 
both companies based certain hopes and plans. How- 


ever, now the race was only a matter of history; there 


198 


THE 1000-MILE TREE IN WEBER CANYON 


**One Thousand Miles from Omaha,” 1869 
by Courtesy Union Pacific System 


’ 


ON THE LAST LEG 
The Union Pacific approaching Promontory Summit 


THE RACE TO THE FINISH 


was no incentive for the Union Pacific to head across 
the plateau save in friendly competition by mileage fig- 
ures. From Blue Creek camp—the rendezvous of 
hangers-on and employes discharged as the work ahead 
lessened—it began to climb Promontory, carrying its 
water with it. 

A trestle 300 feet long and thirty feet high, another 
500 feet long and eighty-seven feet high, numerous ex- 
tremely heavy cuts and fills and sweeping curves (all 
to be charged against the Central Pacific, thank 
heaven!); and on April 28, having this winter and 
spring crossed three ranges of mountains, passed for 
sixty miles through the gorges of the Wasatch and in 
so doing having dropped from over 7500 feet to less 
than 4300, now issuing breathless upon the broad table- 
land fifty miles from Ogden, the track-gang might 
glimpse to-night the twinkle of the Central Pacific bon- 
fires on the desert incline twenty miles westward. 

The grades connected six miles before, where the 
expectant railroad camp of Promontory had settled 
itself to wait for the end. 

Charles Crocker sent word—already sped by tele- 
graph to Doctor Durant in New York: 

“Tomorrow we'll lay those ten miles.” To his own 
force he had said: “ We'll do it now, when they can’t 
get back at us.” 

The ten miles would close the gap to a last ten, of 
which the U. P. share was six. The Union forces pre- 
pared for a holiday to witness the feat. 


VII 
THE FINISH 


Ex-Governor and President Leland Stanford had ~ 
come out to be spectator. From the Union Pacific end — 
there went forward General Casement, Superintendent — 
Reed, Assistant Superintendent Marshall Hurd, and 
others, including a number of laborers; and the camp 
of Promontory sent its roisterous delegation, ripe for 
any event. 

Crocker took his time. Some doubts had been ex- 
pressed among even his own crews that the Union’s 
record of nearly eight miles could be more than 
equalled; but he and his field superintendent, J. H. 
Strobridge, were confident. The men had been hard- 
ened by four years’ work; they had been drilled to — 
operate machine-like; he had hands in abundance and 
a plentiful supply of iron. 

The ties had already been laid far in advance; early 
in the morning the teams were hauling reinforcements 
of others to the fore. The camp train had been rele- 
gated to a temporary side-track, and five long trains 
of rails, spikes, bolts and fastenings were arrayed 
upon the main track—the rearmost sending forward — 
wagonloads in profusion for distribution by means 
of the iron-trucks. 

Sunup to sundown was the working day; but seven 


o'clock had arrived before the signal to jump in was 
200 


THE FINISH 


: given to the bosses by a sharp word and a lift of the 


hand from Crocker on horseback. | 

With nippers the eight selected rail-carriers—four 
in a squad—seized a pair of rails from the rail-truck 
and running them forward plumped them down. 
They were adjusted instantly, the spikes had been 
dropped, the fishplate fastenings and bolts followed, 
there was one man told off for each spike, one for the 
fishplate and one for each bolt; pursuing them closely 
marched a solid column of Chinamen, the outside files 
with picks, the middle file, between the rails, with 
shovels, to ballast the roadbed. Bending their backs 
another squad of the Chinamen shoved the rail-truck 
onward over the newly-laid rails, keeping pace with 
the advance. 

The moment that the supply was down to a few 
lengths, these were thrown off, the emptied truck was 
tipped to one side, another truck, loaded high, galloped 
forward, up the cleared way, and the work proceeded 
without a hitch. Now and again the supply trains 
moved in. 

From water carriers to bolters it was a system that 
brought generous plaudits. Union Pacific watches 
timed the march at 144 feet a minute—five pairs of 
rails, or a pair to every twelve seconds. End o’ track. 
was moving forward as fast as a horse might walk. 

When the panting truck-crews slowed through ex- 


haustion, another crew of the pig-tailed host sprang 
201 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


‘torelieve them. The rail gang was dripping with sweat, 
but worked with automatic precision. 

At 1:30 o’clock six miles of track had been laid in} 
six and one-quarter hours! It was almost incredible. | 
The record had already been broken; the remaining 
four miles were a granted conclusion, and Crocker gave 
the signal to “lay off” for nooning. Here;at the six- 
mile stake, christened the station of Victory but later 
renamed Rozel, the Central experts might throw them- 
selves down to rest and gasp. James Campbell, super- 
intendent of the division, ran the camp train in and 
served dinner to the whole force of employes and guests, 
numbering some 5000. Congratulations were offered 
and accepted. 

An hour’s nooning was taken. At half-past two 
the Central squads lurched into their work for the 
finish. At seven o’clock, when the sun was setting 
behind Monument Point, in the near west, the ten miles 
of new track had been completed, with 1800 feet added 
for good measure.’ 

It was an achievement that has never been ap- 
proached by modern methods even in the United States, 


: 


*A letter to the author from Mr. J. H. Strobridge, the con- 
struction superintendent (H. H. Minkler having been the track- 
laying boss), says: “ That morning we laid six miles in six hours 
and fifteen minutes, and although we changed horses every two 
hours, we were laying up a sixty-six-foot grade, our horses tired 
and could not run; consequently it took practically the rest of the 
day to lay the remainder of the ten miles and 1800 feet.” Mr. 
Strobridge refers to the iron-truck horses and supply-wagon teams, 
both of which were taxed to the utmost. ' 


202 


THE FINISH 


where big things along rapid construction lines are 
monthly accomplished, and where the World War 
_ flooded industry to the high-water mark of production. 
' Perhaps there is something in the remark made by a 
leading railroad official at the recent Golden Spike 
semi-centennial in Ogden, that whereas man-power in 
the building fifty years ago was 100 per cent. efficient, 
these later days are depending upon mechanical means 
and causing a slackening to only 50 per cent. 
At any rate, the ten miles were a man-size job, re- 
_ quiring sheer muscle and nerve combined. The eight 
men who carried the rails were named Mike Shay, Mike 
Kennedy, Mike Sullivan, Pat Joyce, Thomas Dailey, 
George Wyatt, Edward Killeen and Fred McNamara 
—Irish almost to a man, which was a cause of rejoicing 
by the Union “ Paddies.” Each squad of four lifted 
560 pounds in each rail, these being Central thirty- 
foot rails, weighing fifty-six pounds to the yard. Ac- 
cordingly in the ten miles, taking the Central’s estimate | 
of the rail tonnage, eighty-eight tons to the mile, the | 
eight men handled, by physical strength, with only the 
hour’s rest, upwards of 1,970,000 pounds dead weight. | 
The spike-droppers had distributed, by the reckon- 
ing, 52,000 pounds of spikes; the bolt-droppers had 
dropped 14,000 bolts and 28,000 nuts for the 3750 joint 
fastenings at seventeen pounds each. 
The whole amount of iron moved, and some of it, 
handled several times, aggregated in an excess of 
2,000,000 pounds. 
203 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Superintendent Campbell hopped an engine and ran 
the ten miles in forty minutes, as proof that the track 
had been well laid. The Union Pacific crowd protested 
that with the proper preparation, such as massing sup- 
plies and men for the one purpose, they could outdo 
the ten-mile record; their seven and a half miles had 
been laid by the ordinary routine. But imasmuch as 
the astute Crocker had left them only some three miles 
to. go before attaining the meeting-place at Promon- 
tory, they might swallow their chagrin. For some 
years two sign-boards upon the old Promontory line, 
between Promontory and Rozel and Rozel and Lake, 
read: “Ten Miles of Track in One Day.” 

The next day both companies leisurely laid track to 
the meeting-place. On May 1 they had stopped short 
by a pair of rails each. A mere fifty-eight feet separated 
the two ends o’ track. In the one direction stretched 
‘the iron trail of 690 miles to Sacramento; in the 
other direction stretched the iron trail of 1086 miles 
to the Missouri. | 

By a spurt of thirteen months’ duration the Union 
Pacific had laid 555 miles of main track and 180 miles 
of sidings and temporary trackage—altogether 735 
miles; had graded from Laramie to Humboldt Wells, 
676 miles. In their own period of 1868 and this 1869 
the Central had laid 549 miles of main track and graded 
615 miles; had laid 501 miles in nine months. The 
track records were about even, but it must be admitted 


that the Union Pacific had met greater difficulties, not 
204 | 


“CROCKER’S PETS” AT WORK 
The Central Pacific on the Humboldt Plains, 1868 


CENTRAL PACIFIC CONSTRUCTION CAMP, 1869 
Chief Engineer Montague is the bearded man in center 


6 
2 


Se 


ah 


THE FINISH 


only crossing their desert in the summer but also their 
snow mountains in the winter. 


Now the two forces might draw apart and rest 


pending the last act, that of uniting the tracks. The 
end had come with such swiftness that it left them 
dazed with the relaxation of mind and body. The 
Union Pacific had been discharging men rapidly in 
order to lessen the payroll; only enough had been re- 
tained for repairing the last division of the road, so 
hastily laid in winter, and bringing it up to Government 
approval. The commissioners had accepted to the 1000- 
mile tree last February. 

The U. P. construction camp was removed from 
waterless Promontory to the border of the lake below, 
south from Blue Creek station, where there were 
springs. Speedily Promontory camp, up on the 
plateau, and Blue Creek, at the eastern base, brimmed 
with idle graders and track-layers, until the two places 
vied in rough play. The gambling tables, the bars and 
guns and fists were busy, yielding a corpse a night, 
while the inhabitants waited for the curtain to drop 
upon the last scene in the great railroad drama. Truth 
to say, a number of the discharged men were waiting 
for their pay also. 

The Central likewise sought water, but maintained 
a large camp some distance beyond their end o’ track, 
and well removed from the turbulent Promontory ; they 
sent many of their Chinamen back along the line to 


complete work that had been left unfinished. When 
205 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


the ceremony of uniting the rails was performed the 
Union Pacific had considerably more representatives 
on hand than the Central Pacific. | 

By agreement of Chief Engineers Dodge and Mon- 
tague, in behalf of their companies, this ceremony was 
set for the end of the next week, or Saturday, May 8. 
California was alive to the occasion; the efforts to 
arouse the same flame of interest in the less volatile 
East failed. California felt a strong local proprietor- 
ship in the Central; the Union Pacific had amazed the 
people by its progress, but its terminus in the West was 
so far removed that they still could scarcely grasp the 
fact that the gigantic undertaking was a thing already 
accomplished. The let-down from the daily reports 
upon which their minds had been fed for so long pro- 
duced an apathy that required organized enthusiasm 
as a tonic. 

The enthusiasm was organized in nick of time; but 
the Union Pacific management was too busy with its 
own affairs to beat up excursions into a country little 
known. All that it wanted was to get the matter of 
connection done with, and find out how much of the 
road west from Ogden it might control. 

The California delegation was first upon the 
ground, The Central Pacific regular passenger train, 
leaving Sacramento at six o’clock in the morning of 
May 6, bore a number of excursionists. It was closely 
followed by the Stanford special, of engine, tender and 


superintendent’s car. This car, one of the indulgencies 
206 : 


f 


THE FINISH 


_ of the road to date, as an official travelling home of the 


early Pullman style, comprised kitchen, dining con- 
_ yveniences, and sleeping accommodations for ten. 


There were aboard President Stanford, Chief Jus- 


_ tice Sanderson, Governor A. P. K. Safford of Arizona ; 
Collector Gates, of Nevada; the three Government com- 


_ missioners, Sherman, Haines and Tritle, and two or 
_ three other guests. 


The special carried a precious consignment aside 
from the dignitaries. All the previous evening the con- 
tributions of California had been on display in the 
Sacramento office of the Pacific Union Express. First, 
the Last Tie, of highly polished native mahogany or 
laurel, eight feet long, eight inches wide and six inches 
thick, bound with silver and set with a silver plate seven 


inches long and six inches wide, thus inscribed: ‘‘ The 


Last Tie Laid on the Completion of the Pacific Rail- 
road, May —, 1869. Directors—L. Stanford, C. P. 
Huntington, E. B. Crocker, Mark Hopkins, E. H. 
Miller, A. P. Stanford, and Charles Marsh. Officers— 
Leland Stanford, president; C. P. Huntington, vice- 
president ; Charles Crocker, superintendent ; Mark Hop- 
kins, treasurer; E. H. Miller, secretary.” 

The tie was a donation from West Evans, the Cen- 
tral’s tie contractor. 

In addition to the tie there was the Last Spike, cast 
from twenty-dollar gold pieces; of regulation size or 
about seven inches long and extended, at the time of 
casting, by a gold nugget. The nugget was designed 


207 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


to be broken off at the ceremony and melted into sou- 
venirs. Upon the head of the spike was the legend: 


% 


“The Last Spike”; on one side: “ The Pacific Rail- 
road; Ground Broken January 8, 1863; Completed 
May —, 1869”’; on another side: “ May God continue 
the unity of our country as this railroad unites the two 
great oceans of the world”; on the third face: “ Pre- 
sented, by David Hewes, San Francisco”; on the 
fourth, the names of the company officers. 

The value of spike and nugget was set at $413 by 
the Sacramento reporters, but probably was higher.” 

The Express Company itself had presented a silver- 
headed maul for the driving of the golden spike into 
the laurel tie. 4 

On the way out the Stanford special ee 
escaped catastrophe—an omen offset by good luck, . 


* Description of tie and spike is taken from a Saecinie 
newspaper, presumably of May 6, 1869. Concerning the spike, 
Mr. Robert B. Moore, who was a boy of sixteen at the time, sup- 
plies the author with somewhat different data. He was then 
employed in the Vail blacksmith shop at San Francisco. A jeweler, 
Gray, brought in a “piece of gold, about eight inches long and 
the diameter of a fifty-cent piece.’ He wished it drawn out a 
little by fire and hammer. This was done. He explained that i 
was designed for a golden spike. It had no appearance of having 
been composed of gold coins, and he did not mention any such 
method. The David Hewes, according to Mr. A. F. Hess of the 
present Bureau of Pensions of the Southern Pacific Railroa 
Company, was the descendant of Joshua Hewes, New England 
pioneer, and gained prominence as a contractor in San Fran 
‘cisco by removing sand dunes with the first of the steam 
shovels. About the year 1889 he married Miss Lathrop, siste 
of Mrs. Leland Stanford. 


208 


THE FINISH 


Chinamen cutting timber on the mountain above the 
entrance to tunnel No. 14, near the State line east of 
Truckee, saw the regular train pass, and not being 
aware of the following special carelessly skidded a log 
down upon the track below. The log, fifty feet long 
by three and one-half feet through, landed in a cut, with 
its one end against the bank and its butt upon a rail. 
The engineer, rounding the curve here, had scant time 
to slacken. He struck; the engine was badly crippled, 
a guest riding on the cowcatcher was seriously injured ; 
and the log scraped all along one side of the car, taking 
the steps with it. 

A wire was sent ahead from the next station in time 
to hold the passenger train at Wadsworth until the 
Stanford coach might be attached. But those 
“ Crocker’s pets” who had made the road possible al- 
most dislocated the final events that were to celebrate 
their handiwork. 

The coach arrived at Promontory Point Friday 
afternoon, the seventh, in the anticipation that the cere- 
monies were to occur the next day. No preparations 
were found. The telegraph operators for each end o’ 
track were housed in tents within a few rods of each 
other. Query was wired to the Union Pacific Ogden 
office. General Casement replied that it was impossible 
for the Union Pacific delegation to arrive before 
Monday. The heavy rains had interrupted traffic east 
of Ogden. 

14 209 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


That was unwelcome news. President Stanford 
telegraphed back to Sacramento and San Francisco, 
informing of the change in program. Sacramento and 
San Francisco answered that it was too late now for 
them to alter their own schedule of festivities; they 
were going to celebrate anyway. And so they did— 
for three days. alias 

The official party and the other passengers found 
themselves in an embarrassing position. Rain was fall- 
ing; here they were, stranded at Promontory in the 
desert, with a two days’ wait ahead of them. Some 
hired rigs and drove to the nearest Union Pacific con- 
struction camp beyond. General Casement ordered out 
a special train from Ogden to bring them in. This night 
was spent by President Stanford and guests in his 
car. The next morning the U. P. superintendent’s car 


; 


arrived to take them upon a tour into Weber Canyon. 


The invitation was gladly accepted. 

It was plain to the Central excursionists that the 
Union Pacific had encountered weather difficulties. The 
spring rains, of unusual amount, were playing havoc 
with the roadbed down through the canyons of the 
Wasatch—a roadbed levelled in haste to be rehabili- 
tated at leisure. The approaching train from the East, 
bearing the first excursionists and through passengers, 
was creeping in at snail’s pace upon a red-flag trail. 
With tourists gathered from New York, Boston, Chi- 


cago and intermediate points it had left Omaha May 5; 
210 


THE FINISH 


at darkness of May 8 was to be stalled in the downpour 
near the exit from Weber Canyon, ten miles out of 
Ogden. The conductor declined to proceed until day- 
light. Whereupon the boldest of the miserably shiver- 
ing and well-soaked passengers took stage for the haven 
of Salt Lake City, forty miles south. 

The section men were working hard to fortify the 
track and bridges (the Devil’s Gate bridge had to be 
closely watched all day Sunday and Monday), but the 
operating department could give no guaranty of any- 
thing pertaining to arrival of trains. 

Saturday night the Stanford party was returned, 
somewhat dampened. The Stanford car withdrew to 
a more sightly location at Monument Point siding, 
thirty miles west from Promontory, where there was 
a view of the lake. The steward sallied forth and shot 
a mess of plover. Meanwhile San Francisco had been 
celebrating, whether or no, and Sacramento was trying 


_ only to curb the spirits of its hundreds of visitors. 


In the Promontory region the rain continued, 


drenching the plateau and huddled, muddy town and 
_ the hardy construction camps. The outlook from the 
_ Stanford car was dismal. 


The Union Pacific scored by the delay. In the 
evening of Sunday, May 9, the clouds broke, with 


_ promise of fair weather. The construction force heard 


that the Central was preparing to sally early in the 


| morning and extend its spur, temporarily laid, into a 


2iI 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


complete siding, thus establishing a claim to Promon- 
tory as a Central terminal. 

General Casement hustled his gangs. He and Chief 
Engineer Dodge, who held the position of general 
superintendent also, worked all night. At daybreak 
they had finished their own sidings and Promontory 
was a Union Pacific terminus. By the time that the 
Central construction train puffed in, bearing material 
and Chinamen, the Union ballasters greeted it with a 
cheer. “ There was some chagrin and joking, but no 
ill feeling,” relates Sidney Dillon. The ten miles of 
track did not taste so bitter to the Casement Irish now. 

This was the day; and a fine day. The weather 
had cleared so cold that ice formed upon still water, but 
the morning had dawned brightly, with a fresh breeze 
that ironed out the flag snapping from the telegraph 
pole overlooking the gap in the track, and whipped the 
Great Salt Lake into a multitude of foam-tipped waves. 

Promontory town, of a single miserable street 
lined with canvas and rough board shacks, was arrayed, 
the drab, in all her festal clothes. It was her hour. For 
one brief heyday she occupied, the centre of the Na- 
tional stage and acted as hostess to giants of finance 
and industry. She would not have traded places 
with a New York or a San Francisco. She stood 
upon her present, not upon her rather dubious past, 
short and turbulent. 

The Wedding of the Rails resembled a runaway 


marriage. The spot for the ceremony could not well 
212 


THE FINISH 


have seemed more remote from interference, if ac- 
cessible at all. The plateau of Promontory Summit 
was elevated 5000 feet. To the south, behind the camp 
of Promontory, it rose sharply, cedar covered, and 
bordering the lake gave from its crest and out-thrust 
point a magnificent view of the expanding inland sea 
1000 feet below. North from the tracks the bench 
again rose, to form a paralleling parapet. 

Therefore the wedding occurred in a flat valley, 
bare except for the sage brush and a sprinkling of scrub 
cedars, its portals concealed, and the uninvited world, 
save the circling buzzards, shut out. 

It had been planned that the Central Pacific and 
the Union Pacific specials should arrive, from west 
and east, at the same moment. But the ready con- 
struction trains were first on hand, loaded inside and 
out and from cabooses to the pilots of the tooting 
engines with the cheering track and grading gangs. 
They side-tracked, and their bevies poured out. 
A-straddle of sorry grading nags, another concourse 
was hastening. 

A Central Pacific excursion train pulled in, received 
with applause from the crowd. To some of the few 
settlers who had ridden across country for the celebra- 
tion, this was their first sight of a railroad. The train, 
drawn by Jupiter-60, Engineer George Booth, Fireman 
R. A. Murphy, Conductor Eli Dennison, fluttered ban- 
ners and bunting in the red, white and blue—a noble 
sight. The Stanford car had been shunted upon the 


213 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


"siding. The official party was increased by Treasurer 
Hopkins, Engineering Chiefs Montague and Gray, 
Superintendent Strobridge, and others.® | 

A handful of the Chinamen was engaged in putting | 
last touches upon the gap in the tracks—preparing it for 
the last tie and the joining of the iron. The gap had 
been spanned by one line of rail, leaving only the south - 
ends of the ties vacant. 

Between ten and eleven o'clock the Union Pacific 
special excursion train arrived, bringing the Eastern 
officials and also four companies of the Twenty-first 
Infantry, Major Milton Cogswell commanding, with 
the headquarters band, from Camp Douglas, Salt Lake, 
en route for the Presidio at San Francisco. 

The train, B. S. Mallory, conduetor, Sam Bradford 
at the throttle of the Rogers-119, was characterized 
as the most “elegant” in equipment, with the largest 
number of passengers, that had yet run over the line. 

The Stanford muster trudged forward to the 
Durant Pullman (described as “a very handsome car, 
in walnut,” as might be anticipated of a magnate whose 
office was exotic) and lustily bravoed by the assembling 
throng shook hands with the U. P. delegation. 


>Reports of the day naturally include Vice-President Hunt- 
ington and Superintendent Crocker among the Central notables 
present. Mr. Strobridge states that this is an error, Mr. Hunt- 
ington having been in New York and Mr. Crocker being detained 
in Sacramento during the time of the ceremony. The apparent 
defection, for business reasons, was balanced by the unaccount- 
able absence of Oliver Ames, the U. P. president, and his brother 
Oakes Ames. 

214 


THE FINISH 


‘This’ was composed of Vice-President Durant, 
courtly Sidney Dillon, chairman of the board of direc- 
tors and head of the Crédit Mobilier construction com- 
pany, the portly white-haired John Duff from the 
Boston membership, General Dodge, Consulting Engi- 
neer Silas Seymour, General Casement and his brother 
Dan, Superintendents Sam Reed and James Evans, 
Assistant Marshall Hurd, and a number of guests, in- 
cluding the Reverend Dr. John Todd, of Pittsfield, 
Massachusetts, imported to bless the union of the 
contracting parties. 

Any prevailing differences between the garb of offi- 
cial East and official West—ranging from the broad- 
cloth of the functionaries to the business suits of the 
workers—were harmonized by the attire of Doctor 
Durant, who wore a smart black velvet coat and a mod- 
ish New York tie that in brilliancy rivalled, according 
to a chronicler, the other “ last tie.” 

The difference between the two locomotives, 
Jupiter-6o of the Central and Rogers-119 (possibly a 
tribute to the Banker Rogers who later effected the 
rescue of the marooned Durant) was radical. The 
Central engines were addicted to the flaring funnel 
stack, whereas No. 119 presented the straight stack— 
a feature crowned, to be sure, on the plains, with 
the spark-arrester cap. But both engines were or- 
nate with brass bands and filigree, calling for never- 
ending attention. 

The official group proceeded to the gap in the track, 


215 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


- kept clear by the infantry. A second train from the 
West, bringing more sight-seers, arrived ; and a second 
from the East, loaded chiefly with Utahans accom- 
panied by the Tenth Ward band of Salt Lake City. 
The band was resplendent in the gayest of uniforms and 
the brightest of new instruments for which it had 
sent $1200 to London. pen: 

Neither Brigham Young nor the governor of Utah - 
was present. The astute Mormon leader was upon 
church and personal business in southern Utah, and the 
next Monday was formally to officiate at the breaking 
of ground for his own Utah Central road, which should 
connect the City of the Saints with Ogden of the U. P. 
Governor Charles Durkee, Gentile Wisconsin ap- 
pointee in the Territorial chair, was on hand. 

Bishop John Sharp—the “ Railroad Bishop” of 
Utah’s Mormon history—and Colonel Charles R. 
Savage, whose photographs of the day’s scenes have 
proved of lasting record, brought the apologies of Pres- 
ident Young. In all, the Salt Lake capital sent a 
worthy deputation. Ogden sent her mayor, Lorin Farr, 
and among others the companion woman for Mrs. 
Strobridge, in the person of Mrs. Ryan, wife of the 
Central’s Ogden station agent. These two were the 
only women from outside present at the Promontory 
celebration. Promontory town, however, contributed a 
quota of furbelows. 

‘Also present” there were representatives from 
the newspapers of East and West: from the Omaha 


216 


THE FINISH 


Herald, Assistant Editor Foote; from the San Fran- 
cisco Chronicle, Atwell, who was better known as 
“ Bildad the Scribe ” ; from the Sacramento Press, Doc- 
tor Harkness. New York, Chicago and Boston had 
their correspondents; the Associated Press was, of 
course, on hand. 

By orders of the Western Union superintendent, 
W. B. Hibbard, wires were being run from the nearest 
telegraph pole down to a special operator’s kit upon a 
small four-legged deal table beside the gap, where W. N. 
Shilling, of the Ogden office, presided. A strange 
sense of awe pervaded more than one of the onlookers, 
who realized that in sunset land San Francisco was 
bending attentive ear, that afar in the East Omaha, St. 
Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington on the 
Potomac, New York and Boston of the Atlantic, and 
New Orleans, Queen City of the Gulf, were focusing 
upon this small spot in the erstwhile region of nowhere. 
The hot sun rode higher into the blue dome, and the 
plain and the blue-gray ridges shimmered ; the peering 
crowd, afoot and on mule and horse, shifted and jostled, 
illy content with the brave music from the bands. The 
number of spectators has been variously estimated, 
from Sidney Dillon’s careless 500 or 600, mainly “ con- 
tractors, employes and surveyors,” to the more fluent 
guidebook’s 3000. It is probable that it was 1500 at 
the utmost, with the construction men—the Irish, the 
Chinamen, some Mexicans, some Americans, a cos- 
mopolite body—in the ascendant. 

217 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


They had toiled, not to this end but to this time, 
the ending was only an incident in the race. 

General Dodge and Edgar Mills, of 
(son of the San Francisco banker, D. O. Mills), 
been conferring together. The space to the south 
the gap was kept open, the officials and guests of 
occasion grouped themselves on either hand within it— 
the Heroine of the C. P. and Mrs. Ryan and the 
children occupying a post of honor. 

Received with craning of necks and admiring 
ments, Construction Superintendents Strobridge of 
Central and Reed of the Union Pacific brought from 
Stanford car the silver-plated laurel tie. The two 
followed—the Central rail proudly carried by a 
frocked squad of Chinamen under their boss, H. 
Minkler, the U. P. rail carried by an Irish squad 
Foreman Guilford. The cheers broke out afresh. 
veteran recounter says that “ we all yelled like to bust 
throughout the program; the engines shrieked.* : 

Just before noon General Dodge, acting as 
man while Mr. Mills conducted proceedings, lifted bis 
hand for silence and introduced Doctor Todd. 

*A letter to the writer from another of the spectators relates 
that when the two rails were arrived, a voice called to Photog- 
rapher Savage: “Now's the time, Charlie! Take a shot.” The 
word “shoot” was all too familiar to the Mongolians out 
sundry painful experiences. They “looked up, and saw 
opening of the camera pointing their way "—and dropping the 
stampeded for cover, amidst the joyous shouts of the deligh’ 


crowd. It took considerable argument to get them back for 
laying of their rail. 


218 


THE FINISH 


The telegraph instrument had been clicking the 
‘message east and west to impatient enquiries from 
various offices: 

“To everybody. Keep quiet. When the last spike 
is driven at Promontory Point, we will say ‘ Done.’ 
Don’t break the circuit, but watch for the signals of the 
blows of the hammer.” 

The instrument clicked again: 

“ Almost ready. Hats off; prayer is being offered.” 

This was bulletined at 2:27, eastern time, in Wash- 
ington. By orders of James Gamble, head of the 
Western Union, all wires were cleared for Promontory 
news, which had the right of way. Consequently the 
bulletins flashed from the little deal table high in the 
Utah desert were read almost at the same moment by 
‘the crowd collected in front of the telegraph offices in 
the majority of the large cities the length and breadth 
of the continent. 

_ At Promontory Doctor Todd had concluded, ere 
this, and the abligatory speeches were being delivered. 


By President Stanford, in part: 

“The day is not far distant when three tracks will 
be found necessary to accommodate the commerce and 
travel which seek a transit across this continent. Freight 
will thus move only one way on each track, and at rates 
of speed that will answer the demands of cheapness 
and time. Cars and engines will be light or heavy, 
‘according to the speed required and the weight 
to be transported.” 


219 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


While there was much curiosity to see the handsome 
figure of California’s noted ex-governor, who was 
rivalled by only the likewise noted Huntington, his 
words were not prophetic to many of the hearers, and 
struck with astonishment a boy of nine, perched atop a 
telegraph pole. His father had brought him to Promon- 
tory from California that he might see and remember, 
for “there would never be another transcontinental 
line built—it was too expensive to be repeated.” 

Doubtless many another mind that day shared that 
opinion. But within attainment to full stature the 
same boy was enabled to cross country by choice of 
several transcontinentals. 

Chief Engineer Dodge, of the Pacific, was called 
for. As general superintendent he said: 

“Gentlemen, the great Benton proposed that some 
day a giant statue of Columbus be erected on the high- 
est peak of the Rocky Mountains, pointing westward, 
denoting this as the great route across the continent. 
You have made that prophecy to-day a fact. This is 
the way to India.” 

The crowd yelled, with cheers for the United 
States, for the Star-Spangled Banner, for the Pacific 
Railway, for the officers, for the men who raised the 
money, for the men who built the grades and laid the 
track—not forgetting the engineers who found theway. 

To this there might have been no end; it was a 


crowd waxing exuberant with proper enthusiasm. The 
220 


THE FINISH 
telegraph operator had sent the bulletin—received in 
the East at 2:40: 

“We have got done praying, the spike is about to 
be presented.” 

Some trouble was being experienced at Omaha with 
the wires, and the bulletins were delayed. 
Chicago office replied: 
“We understand. All are ready in the East.” 
The spikes had been brought forward; also the 
| silver-headed maul, which the operator connected with 
_ his instrument. 
To Doctor Durant, the Union Pacific vice-presi- 
dent, Commissioner F. A. Tritle, who was also Re- 
publican aspirant to the governorship of Nevada, 
presented a spike of silver from the Comstock lodes. 
| “To the iron of the East and the gold of the West, 
Nevada adds her link of silver to span the continent and 
weld (wed?) the oceans.” 
Rumor said that in forging this spike 100 miners 
each had struck one blow. 

Governor A. P. K. Safford of Arizona added a 
spike of alloy; gold, silver and iron. 
_ “Ribbed in iron, clad in silver, and crowned with 
Beta, Arizona presents her offering to the enterprise 
that has banded the continent and welded (wedded?) 
‘the oceans.” 
Idaho and Montana furnished spikes of silver and 
gold. California was generous with two golden spikes, 
one for either meeting end of rail. They were pre- 

221 


| 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY | 


sented by Doctor Harkness, of Sacramento, in behalf of 
that State, ‘‘ within whose borders and by whose citi- 
zens the Pacific Railroad was inaugurated.” 

“From her mines she has forged this spike,” he 
addressed, to the waiting Stanford, standing in readi- 
ness to receive the silver-headed maul from the Pacific 


Union Express representative, Mr. Coe, “and from 
her woods she has hewn this tie, and by the hands of her 
citizens she offers them to become a part of the great 
highway which is to unite her with her sister States 
on the Atlantic. From her bosom was taken the first 
soil, so let hers be the last tie and the last spike.” 

The telegraph instrument had ticked off: | 

“All ready now; the spike will soon be driven, 
The signal will be three dots for the commencement 
of the blows.” 

Sidney Dillon states that the arrangements were 
made on short notice; that the two companies were too 
much occupied with their own affairs, financial and 
building, to get up an elaborate program. Nevertheless, 
graceful speeches, these, and the responses; and all in all 
a pretty little ceremony, without frills but impressive. 
The brief words and the picturesque scene must have 
struck home to even the rudest element in the human 
mélange there gathered. 

The silver spikes had been set into holes prepared 
to receive them, and in perfunctory fashion partially 
driven by rather abashed guests. Doctor Durant was 
invited to drive his golden spike, and debonairely ac- 
complished the feat. | 


222 


THE FINISH 


The Last Spike remained untouched. President 
Stanford was to have the privilege of signalling the 
waiting world. It was a moment pregnant with his- 
tory ; likened afterward to the signing of the Declara- 
tion of Independence and the landing of the Pilgrim 
Fathers. National progress bided only the hammer 
taps that from the long campaign to level the moun- 
tains and split the deserts dividing a great people 
should announce the “Open, sesame!” of ‘“‘ Done!” 

Amid the hush, and inconvenienced by the dangling 
wires, President Stanford plainly was nervous. He 
delivered a tentative blow at the golden head—a blow 
to be heard “the farthest of any by mortal man,” like 
the first shot fired at Lexington; but he struck only the 
rail. That mattered not. The gods were gracious and 
the telegraph operator obliging. The instrument re- 
corded “ Dot! Dot! Dot !—Done!” 

_ The celebrating San Francisco and Sacramento re- 
ceived it direct. The Omaha board grew panicky, but 
the operator there was fully equal to the occasion, and 
instantly passed the message on to Chicago. 

| At 2:47 (eastern time) the magnetic ball upon the 
dome of the capitol at Washington fell and the crowd 
before the telegraph office was shouting. At San Fran- 
cisco the three dots had pealed the heavy fire-bell in 
the city hall tower and had started the discharge of 220 
! uns at Fort Point. At Sacramento the answering 
in of cannon, whistles and bells drowned the uproar 


f thousands of excursionists brought in from valleys 
223 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


and mountains by free trains. At Omaha one hun- 
dred guns were booming from Capitol Hill, and a 
cheering procession of military and civic companies 
traversed the streets. 

In New York another 100 guns were firing, Trinity 
Church was chanting the Te Deum, and the bell-ringer 
was standing ready to follow with Old Hundred on 
the chimes. In Philadelphia the Liberty Bell had 
spoken, and Independence Hall was vibrant to a joyous 
clamor. Buffalo echoed to the “ Star-Spangled 
Banner” sung by a mighty concourse in the streets. 
Through decorated Chicago wended a procession four 
miles long, and Vice-President Schuyler Colfax was 
inspired for his evening address. In Salt Lake the 
great Tabernacle was filled to overflowing with Mor- 
mons and Gentiles forming one happy family. In 
Ogden, where the news from the front had been re- 
ceived at 12:32, the guns had been firing for fifteen 
minutes from courthouse, city hall and Arsenal Hill; 
all business places were closed, and beginning at two 
o’clock 7000 people, gathered in the new Tabernacle, 
listened to addresses and to a program by Huntington’s 
Martial Band, which opened with “ Mill May” and 
closed with “ Hard Times Come Again No More.” 

On Promontory Point, President Stanford, after 
his first remarkable blow, had politely stood aside for 
Vice-President Durant, who with responsive courtesy 
imitated the first effort by striking the rail also, instead 
of the Last Spike. 


224 


THE FINISH 


To President Grant at Washington there was flash- 
ing the formal announcement : 

PROMONTORY SUMMIT, UTAH, May to, 1869. 

The last rail is laid, the last spike driven. The Pa- 
cific Railroad is completed. The point of junction is 
1086 miles west of the Missouri River, and 690 miles 
east of Sacramento City. 

LELAND STANFORD, 
Central Pacific Railroad. 
T. C. Durant, 
Sipney DILLon, 
Joun Durr, 
Union Pacific Railroad. 

President Stanford and Vice-President Durant 
grasped hands across the tie. The perspiring official 
photographers, Colonel Savage, of Salt Lake City, and 
Albert Hart, of Sacramento, worked hard with their 
slow lenses and delicate wet plates. The crowd was 
again yelling “fit to bust’; the bands tooted and the 
engines shrieked, and the nine-year-old boy almost fell 
from his telegraph pole. The operator was busily 
receiving messages from East and West. 

All the functionaries present were invited to tap 
the Last Spike, and it soon was in a rather battered con- 
dition beside the scarred iron. But no one begrudged 
that extravagance. The final setting of the spike was 
awarded to the two engineers, Dodge and Montague— 
the men who had found the way. Mr. Montague struck 
first, General Dodge second. They also shook hands. 
After that there was a medley of hammering, with 
various spikes as the marks, 

15 225 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The two engines, Jupiter and 119, which had been — 
separated by the late gap, were unhooked from their 
trains. Bearing enthusiasts who clung like ants, they 
advanced proudly down a cheering lane. The “ stokers ” 
took the throttle, the “ drivers” swung out to the pilots, 
each with a bottle of champagne ; and as the locomotives 
touched noses, the bottles were broken upon the oppo- 
site pilots, so that the wine foamed down upon the last 
tie and the last rails and the last spike. 

Hooray! The engineers shook hands, and the 
cameras clicked. 

Snorting Jupiter and 119 backed up and hooked 
on. The Central train retired a short space; the U. P. 
train entered, crossed the juncture of the tracks, halted 
an instant, and majestically withdrew. The Central 
train pursued, to achieve a similar feat. The transcon- 
tinental iron trail was an entity. 

Scarcely had the gap been cleared when joint crews 
of Central and Union trackmen charged in with spades, 
crowbars and pinchbars; jerked the precious spikes 
from the precious tie, unbedded the tie itself, substi- — 
tuted a common tie, drove iron spikes home and bolted 
the fishplate fastening. It was accomplished with the — 
celerity born of toilsome years, but with a celerity none 
too much practiced, for scarcely had the workers 
straightened their backs when the rush was upon them. 
Knives were digging at the tie, reducing it to splinters, 
and hacking at the rails. Verily, the human mind ran 


in about the same channels as to-day, fifty years later. — 
226 


THE ENGINES TOUCH NOSES, PROMONTORY SUMMIT, MAY 10, 1869 


Dr. T. C. Durant in the centre 
By Courtesy Union Pacific System 


ns 


ore 


THE FINISH 


Six ties and two rails were demolished before the junc- 
ture was left in peace to the slower inroads of time. 

By motion of the Union Pacific the combined offi- 
cials and guests adjourned to the Durant Pullman— 
that “ superb piece of cabinet work ”—and received the 
telegrams that were pouring in. 

Then by invitation of the Central party they all 
adjourned to the Stanford car, where wine and speeches 
flowed during a “ sumptuous lunch.” 

In mid-afternoon the track was cleared both ways, 
as the traffic returned east and west. This night Prom- 
ontory, of thirty tent-houses, left to its own devices, in- 
dulged itself with a grand ball, a banquet, and a torch- 
light procession. The Central Pacific paid a warrant 
of $1000 to George Rowland, “account of celebration 
upon completion of the railroad.” 

At San Francisco a genius of the West had drafted 
his famous verses upon “‘ What the Engines Said ”’: 


Pilots touching—head to head. 
Facing on the single track, 
Half a world behind each back? 


And a genius of the East had uttered, as demanded 
by his muse: 


Ring out, oh bells! Let cannon roar 
In loudest tones of thunder. 

The iron bars from shore to shore 
Are laid, and Nations wonder. 


227 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Through deserts vast and forests deep, 
Through mountains grand and hoary, 
A path is opened for all time, 
And we behold the glory. 
* * * * * * 
We reach out toward the Golden Gate 
And eastward to the ocean, 
The tea will come at lightning rate; 
And likewise Yankee notions. 


From spicy islands off the West 
The breezes now are blowing, 

And all creation does its best 
To set the greenbacks flowing. 


The eastern tourist will turn out 
And visit all the stations, 

For Pullman runs upon the route 
With most attractive rations. 


On the morning of May 11 the first transcontinental 
passengers by rail from the East passed across 
the legendary last tie, once more whittled to the 
danger point.® 

On May 12 a San Francisco dispatch in the New 
York papers announced that at the moment of the 
driving of the last spike a consignment of tea had been 
started eastward—thus “ inaugurating the overland 
trade with China and Japan.” This, says Sidney Dillon, 
was the main thought of the officials at Promontory: 


*The Golden Spike is still preserved, and so is the silver- 
headed maul. The Last Tie was discovered, a decade ago, dust- 
covered and neglected in a store-room of the Southern Pacific 
shops at Sacramento. It was cleaned up and removed to the 
directors’ room in San Francisco, where the fire of 1906 
destroyed it. 

228 


THE FINISH 


the Pacific Railway led to the marts of the Orient, 
rather than to the many doors of the local, widely 
lying Occident. 

May 14 the Central Pacific paid another voucher 
of $2000, to George Rowland, “ account of celebration 
upon completion of the railroad.” Well, it was worth 
the money, at any fiddler’s price. According to cur- 
rent reports, that was indeed a “ sumptuous” affair in 
the Stanford car. 

“So mote it be,” as the facetious Silas Seymour 
would have said. By evening, following the cere- 
monies, there was only a small force of construction 
and operating experts here upon the ground, to whip 
the junction into shape for through traffic. 

Many of the engineers and construction officials 
met again, at the laying of last rails on the Texas and 
Pacific, when it joined the Southern Pacific; on the 
Santa Fé and the Atlantic and Pacific, on the Canadian 
Pacific, and elsewhere. A great era of railroad building 
had definitely opened; the graduates of the Union Pa- 
cific and the Central Pacific were equipped for any task. 

Of the brilliant Dr. Thomas Durant there is one last 
word. While his contemporaries, Stanford, Hopkins 
et al., were speeding westward, content and in funds 
sufficient for the day, he himself, speeding eastward, 
encountered a most vexatious demand for a reckoning. 

At Piedmont, on the east slope of the Wasatch 
summit, his train was halted by gunshots, a pile of ties 
and an open switch—summons quite sufficient from 


300 discharged and not yet paid graders and tie 
229 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


cutters. They had subsidized a willing telegraph 
operator, installed him in the station, kept tab upon 
the approach of the Durant train bringing the Durant 
cars—and here they were. 

The train was shifted to the siding; the tail was 
uncoupled and the engineer told to “move along,” 
which according to the narrator he was “very glad 
to do.” The cars composing the quarters of the Union 
Pacific dignitaries and guests were placed under guard 
until the demands of the insistent crowd were satisfied. 
It was a veritable hold-up—the first on the road. 

The amount of back pay aggregated in the neigh- 
borhood of $200,000. Doctor Durant had no immedi- 
ate means of supplying the deficiency—and he argued 
that he was not to blame, anyway. The spokesmen for 
the crowd were obdurate. The rather perturbed vice- 
president and financier telegraphed east and west, ap- 
plying for ransom; but he was kept in custody from the 
eleventh to the thirteenth before Henry Rogers, who 
controlled a string of banks in Cheyenne, Laramie and 
Salt Lake, effected his release by transmitting the cash. 

Doctor Durant, who had been made the scapegoat 
in lieu of irresponsible contractors, proceeded on, with 
the remark that le had “had enough of the West.” 
And the West knew him not again. He vanished also 
from railroading.® 


©The above incident is related by Mr. W. H. Hampton, of 
Colorado, a surviving member of the “gang.” His own share 
of the pay due was $478, earned by cutting ties. 


ial 


UNION PACIFIC LOCOMOTIVE 119 
At Promontory Point, May 10, r869. Dignitaries of the day posed on the boiler 


IN THE DAYS-OF THE OLD WOOD-BURNERS 
Central Pacific R. R., Promontory Point, May, 1860 


See 


Sea alee 


% 


EDR) 
BLoop ON THE TRAILS 


Tue Pacific Railway across continent was built 
straight through a country hostile by nature and by 
man. For the eastern march and the western march 
- alike there were the mountains and the utter deserts; 
but whereas the Central Pacific invaded the rabbit runs 
of the wandering Paiutes and Shoshones (Nevada’s 
native sons deficient in weapons and morals), the Union 
Pacific struck at the heart of the buffalo range, long the 
rich preserve of the lordly Sioux and Cheyennes. The 
iron trail crossed the pony trail—the lodge trail and the 
war trail. The telescopic transits of the surveyors 
brought the-shriek of the iron horse, the shriek of the 
iron horse was the banshee wail from the bad gods, 
dooming the wild meat. 

The march of the Central Pacific was not an armed 
march. With that adroitness which levelled all oppo- 
sition save the mountains, the company early minimized 
Indian troubles. It was fortunate in having to deal 
with only the Diggers and the Snakes, who had already 
been taught humility by the murderous retaliations of 
the emigrants and the miners. 

A solemn treaty was negotiated—a treaty remark- 
able, first with the Paiutes, then with the Shoshones. 


“We gave the old chief a pass, good on passenger cars, 
231 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


‘and we told our men to let the common Indians ride on 

the freight cars whenever they saw fit,” Collis P. Hunt- 
ington explained. The free transportation was potent, 
as always. The company promised that if the Indians 
would take care of the road, they would be cared for in 
return. Selah! The pleased Paiutes and Shoshones 
kept faith. RY 

Succeeding California railroad projects copied. The 
Atlantic and Pacific, through northern Arizona to meet 
the westward-pointing Santa Fé; and the Southern Pa- 
cific upon the bloody trail of the Butterfield Southern 
Overland Stage down toward the Mexican border, tore 
a leaf from the Central’s book. The Apaches perused, 
and agreed. 

After the surveyors had driven home their stakes, 
and after the graders had enforced rule and misrule, 
the fierce Apaches lifted no arm against the section 
men, train crews or passengers upon the Southern Pa- 
cific Railroad in Arizona and New Mexico. Another 
miracle, this. 

The plains Indians were of different mettle. 
General Sherman thought that he had solved their 
problem when in writing to his brother the Con- 
gressman he advised: 

“No particular danger need be apprehended from 
the Indians. . . . So large a number of workmen 
distributed along the line will introduce enough whiskey 
to kill off all the Indians within 300 miles of the road.” 

The whiskey was wielded manfully, but it proved 

232 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


a double-edged weapon. Sherman himself was sum- 
moned to the rescue. ; 

“Every mile had to be run within range of the 
musket,” said General Dodge, speaking of the years 
when the track was chasing the graders. “ In making 
the surveys numbers of our men, some of them the ablest 
and most promising, were killed; and during the con- 
struction our stock was run off by the hundred, I might 
say by the thousand; our cars and stations and ranches 
burned. Graders and track-layers, tie-men and station- 
builders, had to sleep under guard, and have gone 
to their work with their picks and shovels and their 
mechanical tools in one hand and the rifle in the other, 
and they often had to drop one and use the other.” 

The military departments protected. Through Ne- 
braska and Wyoming the road was “ reconnoitred, 
“surveyed, located and built inside their picket line.” But, 
as General Crook suggested, it is hard to surround three 
Indians with one soldier ; and there was a period when 
it did seem as though the Pacific Railway from the east 
could proceed no farther. 

The opposition to the advance of the iron horse and 
the medicine wagons of the whites was manifest openly 
in 1866, when survey parties were driven in from the 
plains of central Nebraska, and Chief Red Cloud, of 
t e Sioux, personally warned the engineers in present 
yoming that they must turn for the back trail. 

“We do not want you here. You are scaring away 
the buffalo.” 


233 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


The bloody year 1867 dawned redly. This was the — 
year when the northern Plains Indians made one last 
concerted effort to halt the forward march of empire: 
when all along the Smoky Hill emigrant route through 
Kansas into Colorado, and all along the great Overland 
route on the north, through Nebraska, ranchers and 
stage hands fought from sod walls and~ galloping 
coaches for their lives; when Custer rode and Han- 
cock marched and Sherman raged; when the advance 
of the Kansas Pacific crumpled and the Union Pacific 
nevertheless did its 260 miles of track, 1600 miles 
of line, 3000 miles of reconnoissance, in defiance of 
the very devil. 

The bulk of the defense by the military fell upon 
the Second Cavalry, the Twenty-first, Thirtieth and 
Thirty-sixth Infantry, stationed at Forts Kearney, Mc- 
Pherson, Sedgwick, Morgan, along the Platte; new 
Fort Russell at Cheyenne, Laramie headquarters to the 
north, Sanders beyond the Black Hills, Douglas of Salt 
Lake City; assisted upon the plains by the free-roving 
Pawnees of Major Frank J. North, the white chief. 

He had organized them; him they trusted because 
he spoke their tongue and had lived in their lodges. 
There were four companies enlisted into the United 
States army as scouts and outfitted with regulation 
arms and clothing. They were incorrigible as soldiers 
—they cut the seat from their blue trousers, in battle 
they, preferred to ride breechesless altogether; it was 
useless to place them upon guard duty, they remained 

234 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


as much Indian as a house dog remains a dog; but 
when they sighted their hereditary enemies the Sioux 
and the Cheyennes they fought with the reckless aban- 
don of crusaders charging the Moslems. 

The year 1867 broke first upon the heads of the 
devoted surveyors. L. L. Hills, assistant chief for 
James A. Evans, who had charge of the location work 
from Cheyenne westward over to the Laramie Plains, 
was the initial victim. 

The Sioux attacked his party in May, six miles east 
of present Cheyenne; killed him, and had it not been 
for the prompt leadership of Axeman J. M. Eddy might 
have wiped out the whole crew. Eddy, a lad scarcely 
yet of age, organized the defense and made a running 
fight of it until the Sioux sheered off. 

General Dodge learned of the affair by dispatch 
from the commanding officer at Fort Collins of north- 
ern Colorado, saying that one J. M. Eddy had brought 
a Union Pacific survey squad in from the Lodge Pole 
fifty miles to the northeast, and that the chief of the 
party, by name Hills, had been killed. 

General Dodge knew nothing about the employe 
Eddy; but upon inquiring in the engineering depart- 
ment at Omaha ascertained that he was upon the rolls 
as an axeman, and had served in the Sixteenth Army 
Corps during the war. 

That being the general’s own corps, he naturally 
was the more interested—at the same time recognizing 
by the Fort Collins dispatch that the young man had 

235 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


performed a brave deed. So, inasmuch as he was about 
to start west with General Rawlins and guests, he wired 
to have Eddy meet him at Lodge Pole Creek, on the 
survey line in southeastern Wyoming, near the scene 
of the tragedy. 

There he found out by conversation that Eddy had 
entered the Thirteenth Illinois Volunteer Infantry when 
only sixteen, and had fought throughout the war. 
Prompt promotion in survey duty followed the conver- 
sation, and was well deserved, for other promotions 
ensued throughout the construction period of the Union 
Pacific. From the Union Pacific Engineer Eddy ac- 
companied his chief to the building of the Texas Pa- 
cific; he continued in the railroad service and died in 
the harness as the widely-known general manager of 
the Southwestern System. Few careers have been more 
fully earned than that of J. M. Eddy, the axeman who 
by his incisive character rallied his comrade surveyors 
against the triumphant Sioux. 

The station of Hillsdale, upon the Union Pacific in 
southeastern Wyoming, is a silent monument to the 
man who died there. A mild and peaceful name this, but 
like many a mild and peaceful personality it harbors 
memories unsuspected. 

Continuing westward, General Dodge was met by 
more bad news. Percy T. Browne, another assistant 
engineer in the Evans division, also had been killed; 
and he not the only one. 


Browne was young, and a veteran. He had risen 
236 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


from the ranks, having enrolled in 1864 as rodman. 
Last fall he had been engaged in reconnoitering through 
the main ridge of the Colorado Rockies for a prac- 
ticable route across out of Denver. From Berthoud 
Pass, 11,300 feet, he had worked north to Boulder 
Pass, 11,700 feet, and thence to Argentine Pass, almost 
13,000 feet where fifteen feet of snow covered the sum- 
mits. A terrific early storm caught him and party, com- 
pelled them to abandon their animals and fight their 
way afoot to the lower country. 

This spring of 1867 he had leit Omaha March 6, 
and finally had forced a trail through the spring bliz- 
zards to La Porte stage station of northern Colorado; 
on north to the Black Hills, and at last to Fort Sanders 
at their western base. His orders were, “to develop 
the country from Fort Sanders to Green River,” two 
hundred and seventy-five miles. 

No assignment could have been more dangerous. 
The region comprised the Laramie Plains, that prized 
hunting range of the Sioux; and the far, unprotected, 
practically unknown Red Desert and Bitter Creek 
basins beyond. 

With his party he was only six days, or fifty-five 
miles, out of Sanders, and was reconnoitring from his 
camp near Rock Creek north of the Overland Stage 
route through the Laramie Plains, when on the evening 
of May 12 it was rushed by the Sioux. A wood-gather- 
ing squad under charge of the stripling Stephen Clark 
was cut off; Sergeant Clair, of the Second Cavalry 

237 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


escort, was killed; a span of work mules was stampeded, 
and the few men barely managed to reach shelter, 
with the loss of several guns. 

The attack was resumed in the morning. This time 
Clark fell. He was from Albany, New York—a 
nephew of Thurlow R. Weed, the veteran New York 
State journalist and politician, and “had much en- 
deared himself by his genial and happy disposition to 
all the members of the party.” 

The Sioux were beaten off in action which caused 
Corporal Cain, Privates Doyle, Lipe and Hughes, of G 
Company, Second Cavalry, to be mentioned by Colonel 
Gibbon in dispatches. Mention of the engineers in the 
field reports refers to the dead, and not so much to the 
living, by name. 

Browne took the bodies back to Sanders and re- 
couped. On June 1 he led his party on again. The 
survey work must not stop. They all crossed through 
the Laramie Plains, running lines as they went, forded 
the North Platte River, and presently had the Red 
Desert before them. 

Field survey work in Indian country is particularly 
perilous. The party is necessarily strung out, with the 
level-men and the front and rear flag-men separated 
from the chief and from each other by a quarter of a 
mile. The red skulkers scarcely could ask better game. 

Browne had made one advance trip over the divide 
into the first of the desert basins; had expected to find 
the western slope with streams flowing toward the Pa- 

238 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


cific. But his maps were untrustworthy. As a matter 
of fact, the Red Basin was the first of several basins 
like the bottoms of dried seas, and the feeble waters 
flowed independently of the Continental Divide plateau. 

That puzzled him. He decided to reconnoiter 
farther; and with eight troopers as escort, leaving his 
party to continue the surveys for locating a line from 
the North Platte to the top of the divide, on July 5 he 
pushed into the Red Desert again. 

This was a land of ruddy buttes and soil, unbounded 
sage, and patches of soda and alkali. A baleful wizard 
had blasted it with a curse, and handed it over to his 
genii and their spells. But antelope roamed here, and so 
did the Sioux, their eyes upon the stage line wending 
along the mountain bases to the south. 

The devoted Browne and his equally devoted troop- 
ers had penetrated 100 miles when, at noon of July 23, 
300 Sioux, riding to raid the stage line, pounced upon 
them. They managed to gain a little knoll, and there, 
dismounted, fought the good old-time fight of whites 
against reds from noon to night. They were nine 
against 300. It is but one of many such stories, the 
majority yet untold. 

At dusk Browne was shot through the stomach. By 
repeated charges the Sioux succeeded in stampeding 
all the horses ; they began to draw off ; Browne begged 
the soldiers to leave him and make for the stage line, 
by darkness. They refused, manufactured a litter from 
their carbines and a blanket, and carried him the fifteen 

239 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


ile through the brush to LaClede Station of the 


Overland Stage. And here he died. 

Upon the Union Pacific in the Laramie Plains, east 
of old Fort Fred Steele and the North Platte River, 
there is a small station named Percy. Historians have 
ascribed it to a mythical Colonel Perey of the army who 
died hereabouts, victim of the Sioux. It is a far cry 
from Percy station to Bitter Creek, and a farther cry 
from Percy Browne of the survey to a Colonel Percy 
of the army. The mirage of distance has trifled 
with events. Percy Browne died in line of duty. 
His name lives. 

“Those who knew him best can best appreciate how 
great is his loss,” appealed his friend and associate, 
Engineer Appleton; “‘ a man without a blemish.” 

General Dodge met the now rather demoralized 
main party under Assistant Engineer Francis E. Apple- 
ton west of the North Platte River—* unable to go on 
for want of water, with their horses gone, their escorts 
used up, and apparently with no alternative but to back 
out of the country that Browne was killed in while 
endeavoring to get a line through. They were, how- 
ever, in good spirits, and I had no doubt could soon be 
put on their feet again.” 

He aided in reconstructing the party, commissioned 
young Appleton as chief of it, and pressed ahead. Gen- 
eral Rawlins was gaining considerable accurate infor- 
mation upon the difficulties attending the advance of the 
Pacific Railway. He speedily acquired more. 

240 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


Near present Creston in the same treacherous Red 
Basin they encountered the Thomas H. Bates survey 
party, for whom General Dodge was anxiously look- 
ing. Bates was trying desperately to get out, by run- 
ning a compass line due east, regardless; had suffered 
thirst for three days; had been driven to the supply 
from a poisonous lake, which had almost killed several 
of his men and escort; was abandoning his teams and 
mounts, and struggling forward, with his party crawl- 
ing upon hands and knees, their tongues black. 

The rescue company at first had mistaken the party 
for sneaking Indians, and reached the straggling 
column, after due caution, only in time. 

So much, and little indeed, touching upon the 
danger trail of the surveyors; but to which might be 
added the adventures of the F. S. Hodges party in the 
spring of 1868 among the fastnesses of the Wasatch, 
when they were blocked for two weeks straight by the 
rains and snows; when on May 27 they upset their 
remaining wagons in eight feet of snow; lost all 
their packs in the crossing of a mountain freshet, 
drowned four mules by a cave-in of a mountain trail, 
barely saved several of the men, and, stripped com- 
pletely of wagons and animals and supplies, broke for 
lower country and the haven of Salt Lake." 

So much, however, for the scouts in the advance. 


*Mr. Hodges is one of the assistant engineering chiefs of 
building days who rounded out the half-century to the semi- 
centennial year, 1919, 

16 241 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Behind them followed upon their trail the sappers— 
the graders, living in their “ prairie monitors ” as they 
termed the low dug-out mounds; delving and scraping 
and shovelling, sometimes guarded by a cavalry or in- 
fantry detachment temporarily camped nearby, but 
more frequently unprotected by any visible presence 
save themselves and the Springfields, Spéncers and 
Remingtons stacked near. 

The Indians soon learned the wisdom of contenting 
themselves with the grading stock, and of foregoing 
the more hazardous booty of scalps. These rough-and- 
readies never had the slightest objection to a fracas; 
they were prone to joke and fight each other, but were 
more prompt to turn joke and weapons upon the 
common enemy from without. The orders to survey- 
ors, graders, bridge and tie men were “never to run 
when attacked.” 

End o’ track, and the construction and supply trains 
plying thereto, were the favorite attractions for the 
plains warriors. The hottest operations occurred in 
Nebraska, when the tracks had passed Fort Kearney, 
one hundred and ninety miles out. 

The work trains and freights were forts on wheels: 
the box-car quarters of the section men and other la- 
borers were doubly walled, with sand for a packing; 
so were the cabooses of the freights. They were well 
supplied with rifles and muskets, and in the early pas- 
senger cars the rifle was as familiar as the wrecking - 


axe that has persisted to this day. General Dodge’s 
242 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


private car was, as he styled it, a “ travelling arsenal.” 
Engineer and fireman had guns within quick reach in 
the cab; brakemen wore their revolvers with as much 
ease as they wore gloves. 

The United States commissioners sometimes took 
a hand in the mélées. General J. H. Simpson, of the 
engineer corps of the army; Congressman W. M. 
White, and General Frank P. Blair, of journalistic 
and political fame, were going out with General Dodge 
to inspect the last completed section beyond Kearney, 
and witnessed the Cheyennes fall upon the grading 
camp right within sound of end o’ track and only five 
miles from the post of the military guard. They proved 
their soldier training by running to the Dodge car for 
guns and joining in the charge. 

This Plum Creek vicinity, opposite the stage sta- 
tion of the same name and about halfway between 
Omaha and the Colorado border, for one reason and 
another (principally because a main lodge-trail here 
crossed the Platte) invited the Indians as a feasible 
point upon which to focus. 

Here it was that Dodge, returning from the front 
in his car attached to a train bearing a number of dis- 
charged workmen, was stopped by the telegraphed word 
that down track a freight had run into Indian trouble, 
had been set afire and was stalled, surrounded by the 
shrieking, volleying reds. 

Acting decisively, sometimes the trains were enabled 
to dash through the Indian cavalry, and vomiting 

243 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


stream and ball leave pursuit behind. This was one 


occasion when numbers had told. 

The general delivered rapid orders, rallied the train 
crew and the discharged laborers, discovered that every 
one obeyed the order “ Fall in,” and proceeded care- 
fully to the scene, deployed his force as skirmishers, 
and retook the train, or what was left of it. 

“They went forward as steadily and in as good 
order as we had seen the old soldiers climb the face 
of Kenesaw under fire,” he praised, as quoted in a 
preceding chapter. . 

It was near Plum Creek that occurred, also, the 
Plum Creek Massacre in the summer of 1867. 

End o’ track was then 450 miles out, and into pres- 
ent Wyoming. Plum Creek itself is some 230 miles 
from Omaha. Therefore the Indian attack was made 
upon established traffic. Heretofore the Sioux and 
Cheyennes had confined themselves to wild essays such 


Aerts 


as racing the engine and peppering the cab and boiler 


and the caboose, and to the wilder prank of stretching a 
hide rope, from pony to pony, across the track, in the 
anticipation of stopping the iron horse short. ‘This 
scheme worked disaster to the rope-holders. 

But at dusk Tuesday, August 6, a party of Chief 
Turkey Leg’s Cheyennes accomplished the first real 
railroad wreck ever achieved by Indians. The only 
wonder is that there have not been more of them. 

Porcupine, the Cheyenne who related the event to 


George Bird Grinnell, says that this was the first time 


244 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


any of them had seen a railroad track. From a distance 
they watched the white man’s curious wagons passing 
back and forth; then they went down to inspect the 
trail and found the iron rails. 

They were feeling bitter and poor, because the 
soldiers had been chasing them. And they reasoned, 
with that childlike innocence which covers a mul- 
titude of sins: 

“In these big wagons that go on this metal road 
there must be things that are valuable—perhaps cloth- 
ing. If we could throw these wagons off the iron they 
run on and break them open, we should find out 
what was in them and could take whatever might be 
useful to us.” 

Therefore— 

“We got a big stick, and just before sundown one 
day tied it to the rails and sat down to watch and see 
what would happen.” 2 

This was at a dry ravine four miles west of Plum 
Creek. The Indians had fastened the tie to the rails 
with telegraph wire, and at nine o’clock William 
Thompson, head lineman, and five of his repair crew 
were sent out of Plum Creek on a hand-car to investi- 


_ gate the break. 


The Cheyennes had built a fire, for comfort, and 
were complacently waiting to “ see what would happen.” 


It did. They heard a rumbling in the darkness, and 
_ they might glimpse ‘‘a small thing coming with some- 


?Grinnell’s “The Fighting Cheyennes.” Scribner’s, 1912. 
245 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


thing on it that moved up and down.” The hand-car 
men saw the fire, when too late to stop saw the forms of © 
Indians rising on either side, and at full speed jumped. 

The car struck the tie, turned somersault and landed - 
halfway down the ravine. The six men had dived, 
sprawling, in all directions; gained their feet and tried — 
to escape. 

A mounted Cheyenne chased Thompson and called 
upon him to halt; then shot him through the right arm © 
and, still pursuing, knocked him down with the butt 
of the rifle; stabbed him through the neck and began 
to scalp him. 

Thompson bore the operation without the anzs-— 
thesia of unconsciousness. He desired to yell, but dared 
not utter a sound. “It felt as if the whole top of my 
head was taken right off,” he deplored to the — 


paper correspondent Henry M. Stanley, in Omaha, © 
later. Having obtained the prize, the Indian galloped — 

away, but the scalp slipped from his belt. Thompson 

scuttled after and got it, in the hope that it might be 
made to grow in place again. He heard nothing but t 
groans from his comrades. : 
The success of their experiment emboldened the 
Cheyennes to try farther. They had discovered that the © 
iron trail was not invulnerable. Now they busied them- 
selves by firelight ; with poles pried the end of a pair of 
rails from the chairs, bent them upward, and piling 
more ties again waited. Two westbound freights were 
coming ; the first in charge of Engineer Brookes Bowers 
246 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


(popularly known as “ Bully Brookes”), Fireman 
Gregory Henshaw (who wore the title “ Drummer 
Boy of the Rappahannock” in mistaken tribute to 
the Civil War’s youthful Hendershot), Conductor 
William Kinney, Brakemen Fred Lewis and “ extra” 
Charles Ratcliffe. 

The Kinney train endeavored to run by at twenty- 
five miles an hour. It was derailed in a twinkling. The 
engine leaped from the tracks, dragging with it the 
tender and five cars, including two flat-cars loaded with 
brick. The two flat-cars were catapulted clear over the 
locomotive, and scattered their bricks forty feet in 
advance; the box-cars piled on top of the locomotive, 
and the mass caught fire. 

Fireman Henshaw had been in the act of stuffing 
the firebox with wood. He was thrown against the 
ruddy furnace and roasted alive. Engineer Bowers 
was hurled through the cab window; the throttle handle 
cut his abdomen open, and he sat amidst the débris, 
holding his entrails in with his fingers. 

The delighted Indians pranced around the funeral 
pyre, yelling and laughing and now and then shooting 
into the caboose, still on the rails. 

All this the scalped and sickening Thompson saw, 
by the light of the mounting flames. 

There were brave men in the caboose. The Indians 
clustered at the wreck before; Conductor Kinney and 
the two brakemen and an ex-fireman who was dead- 
heading west piled out into the shadows. 

247 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


“Go and flag that train behind,” ordered Kinney 
of Lewis. 

“T don’t dare. The Injuns are all around,” pleaded 
the brakeman. 

“Damn the Indians!”” Kinney rapped. “ Some- 
body flag that train or she’ll be into us,” | 

Whereupon he started at a run, himself, down track, 
with his lantern; Lewis and the deadhead pelted after ; 
the lanterns bobbed rapidly, signalling of the sprint. 
Ratcliffe, left alone, hid under the caboose. 

In a few minutes he saw the legs of an Indian who 
was investigating alongside. He crawled out, opposite, 
and scurried for safety. The weeds cracked in his trail 
and away he ran, spurred by the sounds of pursuit. He 
sighted the headlight of the oncoming freight, a mile 
distant down track. He glanced behind and saw 
his pursuers—two dusky forms. It was going to be 
nip and tuck. 

The figures of the three trainmen—Kinney, Lewis 
and the other—were outlined against the glare of the 
headlight. The panting Ratcliffe heard the blasts of 
the whistle, calling for the brakes. The train was 
grinding, and the engineer was leaning from his cab. 

Ratcliffe shouted his best, hoping and yet almost 
hopeless. The pursuit still clung to his very heels, and 
his back twitched in expectation of a knife blow. He 
was tortured also by the fear that the engine would 
reverse at once and back out and leave him to his death. 


But his shout was answered, the two Indians shrank 
248 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


from the headlight, he lunged in, breathless, was caught 
up, hoisted aboard, and there sank down to laugh and 
cry hysterically as the train gathered speed in retreat 
to Plum Creek. 

The operator at Plum Creek telegraphed to Omaha. 
Omaha headquarters replied brusquely with the train 
orders: “ Get out of the way as soon as possible.” 

: All the little population of affrighted Plum Creek 

station, except the plucky operator, boarded the freight 
for the safety of Elm Creek station, eighteen miles east. 
The exultant Indians were likely to raid right and left. 

Up track, at the wreck, Lineman Thompson was 
witnessing a scene infernal, eclipsing any Doré canvas. 
The engineer had been shot and scalped and his body 
thrown into the fire. The bursting box-cars were 
being plundered. It wasarichtrain. “ Bales of calico, 
cottons, boxes of tobacco, sacks of flour, sugar, coffee, 
boots, shoes, bonnets, hats, saddles, ribbons, velvets ’”’— 
these were hauled about and scattered broadcast. 

The figures of the Indians grew more and more 
grotesque as from imps they were transformed to 
demons. Ribbons fluttered from scalplocks, braids, 
breech-clouts, and from the manes and tails of the 
ponies. Women’s bonnets moved rakishly hither- 
_ thither. Gaudy calicos and strips of velvet were worn 
toga-like; and whole bolts of cloth unrolled from the 
tails of galloping horses while impromptu races were 
staged, in which warriors tried to run each other down 
and tear the bolts loose. 

249 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


A barrel of whiskey had been broached. Having 
gorged themselves with the spoils, the Indians bore fire- 
brands from car to car. Speedily the whole train was 
a mass of roaring flames, with the drunken savages 
encircling in a furious dance. 

The saturnalia was scarcely abated when, toward 
daylight, the wretched Thompson had crawled and 
staggered away, for Willow Island, fifteen miles west, 
arriving with his rag of a scalp in his hand. 

The Plum Creek refugees returned in the morning. 
With a spyglass they might see the Cheyennes rioting 
around the smouldering wreck, racing and chasing 
while from the bluff another party watched. 

Traffic was paralyzed. The wires were down, west. 
Old Fort Kearney was being dismantled. It had a 
garrison of twelve infantrymen and a band as care-. 
takers. McPherson’s cavalry and most of its infantry 
were distributed west on scout duty. By Overland 
telegraph word was sent from Omaha to Sedgwick at 
old Julesburg for the Major North Pawnees to hustle 
in from beyond end o’ track, 250 miles. 

The day passed. Toward evening the Cheyennes 
were clearing out, bearing their plunder. The Plum 
Creek people ventured to the scene. The Pawnees ar- 
rived, eager for the fight, and set out upon the trail. 

The remains of Engineer Bowers and Fireman Hen- 
shaw were taken to Omaha. They were contained in 
two small boxes thirty inches by twelve, and weighed, 
together, about thirty pounds. Correspondent Henry 


4 
250 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


M. Stanley, who had been detailed by the Missouri 
Democrat to accompany the United States “ peace com- 
mission ” into the plains, was here, and inspected. 

Lineman Thompson also appeared, with his scalp 
in a pail of water to keep it moist. It was nine inches 
long and four inches wide, and as it floated about, curled 
up, it looked like a drowned rat. Doctors Pecke and 
R. C. Moore were very certain that they could make it 
grow fast upon Thompson’s head; but they never did. 
He took it with him, as loose baggage, to England; later 
returned it as a gift for Doctor Moore, who presented 
it to the Omaha Public Library Museum, where it long 
was on exhibition in a jar of alcohol. 

Viewing it, people might try to conjure up that 
scene, now fifty years ago, witnessed by the scalp’s 
original owner, there just west of little Plum Creek 
station, central Nebraska, when the first transconti- 
nental railway was building onward. 

The Sioux took a hand. In April, the next year, 
their bandit Dog Soldiers surprised Elm Creek east of 
Plum Creek, killing five section men, and ran off the 
station stock. On the same day other Sioux attacked 
thriving Sidney, 414 miles from Omaha but short of 
end o’ track and the front by 150 miles. 

Two freight conductors, Tom Cahoon and William 
Edmundson, were fishing in Lodge Pole Creek, a mile 
and a half out. They heard the shooting, and climbed 
up the creek bank to gaze. Several Sioux sighted them, 


and raced to cut them off from the station. 
251 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Cahoon was shot down and scalped and left. Con- 
ductor Edmundson made a running fight, holding the 
enemy off with a small derringer. He arrived with 
four arrows in him as guarantee of his close call. Other 
wounds are mentioned—a half dozen. 

He recovered. Cahoon likewise recovered later; 
was promoted to passenger conductor, ran on one of 
the first two trains out of Ogden when the regular 
schedule had been established after the completion of 
the through line; retired to locate in Ogden, where a 
street is named for him; and always wore his hat “ well 
to the rear of his head,” where there was a peculiar 
“ bare spot.” 

In September of this year 1868 the Sioux imitated 
the Cheyennes by wrecking a mixed train between 
Alkali and Ogalalla, in Nebraska again, some 330 miles 
from Omaha. They bent up a pair of rails; the ends 
pierced the engine’s boiler, the steam spurted out, and 
by the steam and the firebox the fireman was cooked. 
The other trainmen and the few passengers (among 
them the brave Father Ryan, a Roman Catholic priest 
of Columbus, who was nothing loth to fight the devil), 
seized arms and stood the Indians off until a wrecking 
train pulled in. 

This October Potter Station, eighteen miles west of 
Sidney, was rushed, the section hands driven under 
cover, and twenty head of horses and mules stampeded. 

The fragmentary records are altogether inadequate 
to the purpose of depicting the danger trail upon which — 

252 


BLOOD ON THE TRAILS 


the heroes of transit and level, throttle and brake and 
key, repeated the deeds done by those preceding heroes, 
the knights of the goad, the “ ribbons” and the pony- 
express saddle. And, forsooth, it was a toss-up also 


between the security of the trail itself and of the 
traders’ camps. 


No placid Chinamen, these. There they were, 500 
booted, flannel-shirted, hard-fisted, hairy-chested, 
sweat-drained men, at a time: Mike, Pat; Tom, Dick 
and Harry, gathered from city and town, camp and 
steerage, rank and file dog-tired by Saturday night, re- 
moved from all amusements save in their own devices, 
but lustily fed upon red beef and strong tea and coffee, 
ripe for the whiskey and with plenty of it supplied by 
the solicitous peddlers. 

Rarely a Sunday morning here, and likewise in 
the tie camps of the mountains, that did not casually 
note a corpse or two dragged to hasty burial with its 
boots on—unless the boots had already been appro- 
priated. The Roaring Towns were not the only rendez- 
vous with death that demanded a toll of “ one a night.” 

Pneumonia stalked. The construction proper laid 
its tax, levied by sunstroke, freezing, poisoning, drown- 
ing, and relaxed only after the “ Iron Horse Man,” 
bossing the distribution of the hurrying rails, fell be- 
tween the ties of the trestle at Corinne beyond Ogden, 
into the swollen Bear River. Whether anybody sought 
for him history does not state. The track sped on to 
the meeting. 


IX 
Tue “ Roarinc” Towns 


TuHE fourteen new Episcopal churches of the be- 
ginnings on the plains, the newly commercialized old 
mining-camps of the Sierra in the west, the water tank, 
the furrow, the greening of barren ground, the smoke 
from contented hearths and the voices of pulsating 
trade were not alone the tokens planted by the footsteps 
of the Pacific Railway. Flotsam and jetsam were 
strewed in its wake. Evil pioneered in rivalry with 
good while the Union Pacific van swept on, and while 
yonder, over toward the California border range, the © 
Central was stringing the Nevada desert with another 
row of beads. 

There were, then, those recurrent stations of greed, 
the “roaring town” terminal points—each a brief 
supply quarters from which end o’ track was fed with 
iron ammunition and stimulus for man and beast 
until, 100 or so miles out, Jack Casement or Charles 
Crocker stamped his foot and another thistle burst 
into full bloom from some seed waiting in the appar- 
ently sterile soil. 

Upon the Central Pacific mountain and desert trail 
which when first projected might sight only one white 
man along its route of 575 miles from the California 
boundary to central Utah, there flourished, for heyday 
long or short, the terminal bases of Cisco, Truckee, 

254 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


Lakes Crossing, rechristened Reno, Wadsworth, 
Humboldt, Lovelocks, Winnemucca of French Ford, 
Argenta, Carlin, Elko, Wells, Toano—semicolons 
of the railroad history. Upon the Union Pacific trail, 
where for 400 miles at a stretch the rails needs must 
bring their own company with them, there burst upon 


the astonished sunrises North Platte, Julesburg, 


Sidney, Cheyenne, Laramie, Benton, Bryan, Green 
River, Wasatch, Corinne, Promontory Point. And 
these were the epitome of “ roaring towns ” whose like 
has been matched only by a Virginia City, a Deadwood, 
a Dodge City, a Leadville. 

“Hell on Wheels” was the title accorded them; 
whether reported first by Journalist Samuel Bowles, 
their observer in 1868, is not stated, but at any rate the 
phrase has come down uncensored, as a current coin- 
‘age of the day. They successively irrupted along the 
Union Pacific like malignant sores upon the surface 
of a hectic westward-hurrying civilization, only to 
disappear again or form into healthy flesh. They 
were a phenomenon. 

When in the spring of 1866 the transcontinental 
railway, flying the flag of the Union Pacific, headed out 
of Frémont, the only town in the horizon was Colum- 


bus, forty-five miles; when in the early summer it 


drew Columbus across the river to it, and the new 

centre of the United States had been proclaimed by 

George Francis Train, only Grand Island settlement 

broke the distance before; Grand Island moved to the 
255 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


glamour of the rails like steel to the magnet; and the — 


squatter sovereignty of old Fort Kearney waited. 


} 


Kearney was the second of the terminal bases out — 


of Omaha. When it had been put behind, everything 
before was still in the seed envelope, clear to the stage 
cross-roads settlement of Julesburg, 200 miles. 

On November 1, 1866, at the 100-mile point west 
of Kearney there was only the suburbs of a prairie-dog 
town; populous but unsophisticated. By November 22 
there was the city of North Platte, 290 miles out on 
the plains but only five days by mail from New York: 
the future metropolis of North Platte, noisy with ham- 


mer and saw and the bustle of 1000 people—big with © 


twenty buildings, including a brick roundhouse calcu- 
lated for forty engines and already accommodating 
ten; a water tank of “ beautiful proportions ” ; a frame 
depot, also beautiful; the Railroad House hotel that 
should cost $18,000; Casement brothers’ famous port- 


able quarters comprising warehouse, eating-house and © 
general store; and mercantile establishments wet and 


dry, and dwellings of various degrees. 

North Platte City swelled apace this fall and winter, 
as the railroad supplies poured in preparatory for the 
spring drive; as the idle laborers tarried, and as the 
real estate speculators, the merchant adventurers, the 
liquor dealers and the blacklegs of Chicago, Omaha and 
St. Louis hastened to the harvest. 

Everything and everybody bound westward stopped 


here en route: Mormon emigrants, Idaho settlers, Mon- 


256 


_ THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


tana gold-seekers, Overland travellers waiting for a seat 
in the stage to Denver and Salt Lake; plains-and-moun- 
tains freighting outfits by the dozens, their hundreds of 
unshaven bullwhackers ruffling through the streets; 
gamblers of North, South and East revelling in “ flush 
times ” come again; soldiers, remittance men, second 
sons; down-at-the-heel lawyers, doctors, clergymen, in . 
the guise of jacks-of-all-trades ; and tenderfeet plunged 

into the glamour cast by swagger of body and display 

of holstered belt. Every building seemed to house a 

saloon, and every saloon was a den. 

In May there were 15,000 tons of Government 
freight piled up, demanding transportation; 1200 
_ wagons and 800 teamsters were encamped around. In 
the straggling town the cappers barked, the Colonel 
Sellers orated, the seething 5000 citizens roared like 
10,000, and the bluffs along the river echoed. Six 
weeks thereafter and booming North Platte had shriv- 
elled as if blighted prematurely by a fervor of fast 
living. From 5000 it had shrunk to less than 500; for 
all its fatness was festering at new Julesburg, the next 
terminal point. But North Platte did not die; there 
it is, purged and reformed and well-to-do, its wild oats 
sowed, reaped and forgotten. 

Julesburg had been founded, the third of its name; 
377 miles out, as removed from the stage line south of 
the South Platte to squat beside the rails and brag of 
its well-earned title, “ The Wickedest City in America.” 
What a fresh nucleus of the bizarre and vice rampant 

17 257 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


this was, where North Platte experience joined forces’ 
with Denver’s, and all the hard-bitten tail-twisters of 

old Julesburg (toughest of Overland stage stations) 

migrated, jealous of opportunities! 

In June new Julesburg had a population of forty 
men and one woman. By the end of July it had 4000 
transient residents. Town lots, staked off by the land 
agent of the railroad, were selling at $1000. The streets, 
ankle deep in sand, were lined by warehouses, saloons, 
gambling joints, and stores piled with goods fresh from 
New York and Chicago. The people trudged, laughed, 
whooped, bargained, joked and cursed and shot, in the 
exuberance of life at high tide: soldiers, teamsters, 
graders, merchants, clerks, gamblers, tourists ; the “ ex- 


pensive luxuries ” 


of women in Black Crook dresses, 
with fancy derringers daintily dangling at their ribbon 
and rattlesnake-skin belts; Mexicans, Indians, half- 
breeds, horses, oxen and dogs—all these swirled in this 
eddy of the northern plains. 

The “ upper-tendom of sinful Julesburg,” as young 
Henry M. Stanley called them, dined at the Julesburg 
House, selecting from a menu of “ soups, fricandeaus, 
vegetables, game in abundance, pies, puddings, raisins, 
apples, nuts, wine and bread at discretion for the mod- 
erate sum of twelve bits.” 

By their gold watches and expensive chains, their 
modish clothes and their patent-leather boots, he 


thought them to be capitalists, and was amazed to find 
258 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


that they “were only clerks, ticket agents, conductors, 
engineers ” and the like. 
At night the great dance hall, “ King of the Hills,” 
_ was ablaze with the brightest of lights; the strains of 
music, the shuffle of feet, the clamor of voices, almost 
deafened. Along the shallow Platte, beyond the kero- 
sene-illuminated streets, myriad camp-fires twinkled. 
In the mornings the customary dead man was buried. 
The Union Pacific had laid out the town. The 
gamblers and gunmen anticipated owning it cheaply, 
for a human life was worth less than a bottle of wine. 
When on the survey west of Salt Lake City General 
Dodge heard of the defiance to law and order, he wired 
General Jack Casement to go back with his track force 
and help the officers. 
In the fall they visited Julesburg together. Gen- 
eral Casement acted as guide. 
* What did you do, General?” 
*T will show you,” he said. 
He led straight to the graveyard, and indicated by 
_ a wave of his hand. 
: “There they are, General. They died with their 
_ boots on, but they brought peace.”’ 
| Peace indeed! There was nothing else here. Of 
all the “roaring” town of Julesburg, Wickedest City 
| in America, there remained only the graveyard, the 
_ station agent, heaps of tin cans, and the undisturbed 
| prairie dogs and ground owls. After its five months’ 
| 259 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


existence, like a May-fly Julesburg had dried up. Its 
progeny had folded their tents and departed. ‘ 

Cheyenne, “‘ Magic City of the Plains,” was boom- 
ing, 140 miles westward again. Hell on Wheels had 
hit the trail, amazing the sage and the very heavens. 

Casement brothers’ portable warehouse, store and 
dining-room; all the other knock-down contraptions 
of canvas, rough lumber, and sheet-iron; the imitation 
stucco-front buildings, collapsible into sections num- 
bered with the convenience of a pack of cards; the 
gamblers’ lay-outs, the saloon bars, the merchants’ 
counters and desks, the various commodities of trade 
and housekeeping—all these, accompanied by owners 
and employes, had been loaded upon flat-cars for the 
next end of creation. And up the trail wended horse, 
buggy, wagon and foot—man, woman and child astride, 
atop, within, without, dust-drenched, expectant, cheer- 
ing, peering, following the pay-car to Cheyenne. 

Midway, depleted Sidney sat, a minor quantity. 
Who cared for Sidney and its pretentions as a terminus 
when Cheyenne awaited? 

Cheyenne, located by General Dodge July 4 here 
upon the dun flatness in a bend of Crow Creek, at an 
elevation of 6000 feet, already was accoutred complete, 
from spurs to helm; had a city government duly elected, 
two daily papers, 4000 people, and a brass band with 
which to welcome the first influx on November 13. 

Town lots sold by the railroad company at $250 


were being resold at $3500. The post-office was ten 
260 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


by fifteen feet, the Headquarters Saloon thirty-six by 
100 feet. A store building fifty-five by twenty-five 
feet, of rough lumber from Denver, had been erected in 
forty-eight hours. There were two two-story hotels— 
the Rollins House hostelry catered to only the élite, 
including Chief Spotted Tail and Mrs. Spotted Tail, 
recent arrivals “in our midst.” There were the Great 
Western mammoth corral, three banks, a stone ware- 
house costing $20,000, 100 saloons, gambling joints, 
dance halls, a medley of shanties, dug-outs and tents, a 
town site of four sections of land, a military reserva- 


6 


tion four miles square, and a “man for breakfast” 
every morning. 

Great was Cheyenne, the Magic City and the winter 
terminus of the Pacific Railway on the plains. Before 
spring it was headquarters for 10,000 men and women 
of all degrees, and the entrepét for all degrees of busi- 
ness. Every known gambling device was in lucrative 
operation, and legitimate merchants themselves reaped 
at the rate of $30,000 a month. 

The value of the city scrip had been raised eighteen 
cents on the dollar by Magistrate Colonel Murrin, who 
required every man who had indulged in a gun-play to 
pay a fine of $10 “ whether he hit or missed.”” The city 
treasury was plethoric. 

“Your fine is ten dollars and two bits.” 

. “Yes, your Honor; but what’s the two bits for?” 

“To buy your honorable judge a drink in the 
morning.” 

261 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Thus Cheyenne made its hay while the sun of for- 
tune shone and mindless of warning wafted westward 
from the graveyards of certain other once “ Great and 
Growing Cities”: cities upsprung from the desert, full 
equipped for business and pleasure, with ready-made 
aristocracy, commoners, old settlers, first-families and 
newcomers, hotels, restaurants, drink palaces and 
hearth-stones; now reduced to “a few piles of straw 
and brick with débris of pec cans nearly covered by: 
the shifting sands.” 

In Cheyenne the Vigilance Committee arose; the 
military of General J. D. Stevenson marched down 
from Fort Russell; culprits were paraded, criminals 
hoisted. Life ceased to boil, and only simmered. In 
April 1000 grading teams toiled out for Sherman Sum- 
mit and beyond. Five thousand chastened graders and 
track-layers followed. In May Hell on Wheels was 
rolling again into the west; and with its 10,000 souls 
concentrated to 1500, Cheyenne (lucky at that) settled 
down to be a “ quiet and moral burg.” 

On to Laramie, “Gem City of the Mountains,” 
next terminal point of the Pacific Railway. When in 
April the land agent of the Union Pacific arrived as © 
the harbinger of prosperity for the Laramie Plains, 200 — 
people, in wagons, tents, sod-roofed dug-outs and rail- 
road-tie cabins were camped upon the very spot. Four © 
hundred town lots were sold in the first week; 500 am- 
bitious tenements of business, home and pleasure mate- 


rialized in the first fortnight. 
262 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


May 9 end o’ track entered; May 10 passengers and 
freight and the wheeled inferno entered. The rakes, 
touts, cappers, dram venders, three-card-monte men 
and poker kings, their shrill-voiced painted consorts and 
all the other North Platte-Julesburg-Sidney-Cheyenne 
froth and dregs settled like locusts upon new Laramie. 
Tie-cutters, Black Hills prospectors and soldiers from 
Fort Sanders were overwhelmed by the sudden founts 
_of high carnival widely opened. 

The big-game heads, the agates, opals, and moun- 
tain amethysts and rubies heaped in the show-case of 
the station eating-house were the feeblest of the lures 
for incoming tourists; the great water-tank and its 
wind-mill seventy-five feet high, on a base twenty-five 
by fifteen feet—the sparkling streams of water flowing 
down the principal streets, failed to wash away the sins 
of Laramie and the major portion of its 5000 people, 
until the Vigilantes helped. 

For three happy months Laramie roared; within 
six months it had passed the sear and yellow-leaf stage. 
History had been repeated, the farther erstwhile soli- 
tudes had conceived, in turn, and out of unholy 
alliance with some cockatrice the changeling Benton 
had been cast. 

Hell on Wheels had moved there in July. A fort- 
night of influx bloated the new terminus to 3000 human 
beings, swirling and jostling, working, playing, dicing 
with the fates, here on the edge of the Red Desert, 700 


miles from Omaha, 300 from Salt Lake. 
263 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


“ Far as they could see around the town not a green 
tree, shrub, or spear of grass was to be seen; the red 
hills, scorched and bare as if blasted by the lightnings — 
of an angry God, bounded the white basin on the north 
and east, while to the south and west spread the gray 
desert till it was interrupted by another-range of the 
red and yellow hills. All seemed sacred to the genius 
of drought and desolation.” 

It was stage terminus, freighting terminus, rail- 
road terminus, and the terminus of many a life. Water 
was hauled three miles from the North Platte River; 
price $1 a barrel, ten cents a bucket. The streets were 
eight inches deep with white dust, the low buildings and 
the tent and brush shacks resembled banks of dirty 
lime; a man in black clothes looked like a cockroach 
struggling through a flour barrel. 

The mule-skinner, the miner, the gambler, the 
Cyprian brushed sleeves with the merchant, the soldier, 
the tenderfoot and the Eastern tourist. Twenty-three 
saloons and five dance halls wooed to relaxation; the 
monte dealer called incessantly ‘“‘ Watch the ace”; for 
half a dollar a throw one might win the $300 gold watch 
and chain on No. 6 square of the chuck-a-luck board 
(but never did), and just across the street sounded 
the hoarse appeal: ‘‘ Come down here now, you rondo- 
coolo sports, and give us a bet.” 

At night the Big Tent, 100 feet long and forty 


feet wide, summoned the populace to its floor, its 
264 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


mirrored Eastern bar, its monte, keno, faro, rondo- 
coolo, chuck-a-luck and poker straight. 

Life and nothing else was cheap at Benton; time 
itself was precious, space, in this 100 miles of desola- 
tion, was dear. The wholesale liquor dealers in a 
canvas establishment twenty by forty feet booked 
$30,000 a month, at 80 per cent. profit—and felt dis- 
comfited by the sales of rival enterprises. The red- 
brick and brownstone-front buildings of painted pine, 
shipped from Chicago at $300 delivered, mocked the 
senses; half a dozen men could erect a business block 
in a day, two boys with screwdrivers could put up a 
fancy dwelling in three hours. Civilization was im- 
proving its facilities. 

In sixty days all that remained of ebullient Benton 
was a few iron barrel-hoops, a few perforated tin cans, 
a few crooked mud chimneys, a few warped poles like 
Indian scaffolds, and about 100 nameless graves. 

Rawlins, next station, had absorbed the best of 
Benton ; the worst had been properly acclimated by the 
military and the Vigilantes or had trekked to Green 
River City, another 140 miles. 

Green River City, at the western edge of the desert 
country, was sure to boom. Former Mayor Hook, of 
Cheyenne, the Magic City’s first executive, had founded 
it. He had crossed Twenty-Mile Desert, Red Sand 
Desert, White Desert, Bitter Creek Desert—all those 
forsaken stretches where mules succumbed to heat by 


day and at night shivered in a temperature that formed 
265 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


a quarter of an inch of ice on the hoarded water— 
had outguessed the railroad and staked a terminal 
point in advance. 

The grade burst through and carried the graders 
with it. The Casement Paddies charged to the river’s 
brink in September. Two thousand people, perma- 
nent adobe buildings, and law and order greeted them; 
but so did a bridge. General Casement scarcely tarried. 
It was the fall of 1868, and he was due at Ogden upon 
January 1. The rails found the bridge, passed over 

and on; so did Green River City and a Hell on Wheels 
much diminished. 

Of Green River City there remained the adobe 
walls, their empty windows gaping in astonishment. 

Bryan, thirteen miles, proved to be the real ter- 
minal base for the iron and the Casement Brothers’ 
faithful warehouse. But the pace had waxed too swift 
for the flotsam and jetsam drawn into the current. 
Cheyenne had roared like a lion, Benton laughed like a 
hyena, Bryan only blatted. And yet it was tough 
enough while it lasted; the essence of the long back 
trail drifted to it, and the Bad Man from Bitter Creek 
cavorted with joints somewhat stiffened. 

“We'll give you fifteen minutes to leave town,” 
proffered the Vigilantes. “ There’s your mule.” 

“ Gentlemen, I thank you,” he replied. “If this 
damn mule don’t buck I don’t want but five.” 

Casement Brothers’ portable warehouse tarried only 


briefly even at Bryan. The rails climbed to Wasatch. 
266 “ 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


With one saloon, one store, a telegraph station and a 
handful of shacks Bryan was left to meditate amidst 
the sage and greasewood over what might have been. 
To-day knows it not. 

Wasatch, 7000 feet up, 966 miles from Omaha, 
had won the plum of winter terminus. Eastward and 
below, clear to North Platte of Nebraska, 675 miles, 
were strewn at intervals the deflated carcasses of its 
once joyous predecessors. Some were past resuscitat- 
ing, others were only taking breath. Now, up here, 
Wasatch hustled. Four thousand lusty graders and 
track-layers and trainmen and clerks required hospi- 
tality. In the regulation fortnight 1500 persons gath- 
ered to do the honors and reap reward. 

In the week of January when the travelling scribe 
and amateur mule-skinner Beadle was there, and the 
thermometer never rose above three below zero, the 
saw and hammer plied incessantly day and night. 

The tables were spread in the eating-houses before 
the weather-boarding was on. Beadle ate breakfast 
at the California Hotel in a temperature of five below, 
while enabled to view the snowy landscape through 
cracks in the walls an inch wide. 

For three winter months Wasatch lived the life 
and saw the death. It established a record of which it 
was not ashamed, for a community snowed in to the 
eaves of the shacks and deprived of imported amuse- 
ments. Of the forty-three occupants of its new grave- 


yard, only five had “ died natural.” Three of these had 
267 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


frozen to death while drunk; one, a girl, had inhaled 
charcoal fumes, and the other girl, chloroform. 

Wasatch subsided to the rdle of meal station ; 
eventually its table was removed to Evanston, 11 miles 
east, and to-day Wasatch the gateway station into 
Utah is perfectly safe for even the veriest tenderfoot. 

The track tore loose from winter and on into Ogden, 
March 3. On March 25 Corinne (pretty name), at the 
north end of the Salt Lake, thirty-one miles from 
Ogden, was opened for business—any kind of business. 

By the Mormons Corinne, as the only strictly Gen- 
tile settlement amidst the Latter-Day Saints, was looked 
upon askance. The fate of Tyre, Sodom, Moab and 
Edom was freely predicted for it. But the Corinneans 
gazed onward and upward. To be the “Chicago of 
the Rocky Mountains,” ‘“‘ Queen City of the Great 
Basin,” rival of Salt Lake City and of Ogden—that 
was its destiny. 

While endeavoring to fatten upon the short stay 
of the rails as they gathered force for the charge upon 
Promontory Ridge, it proclaimed its advantages. It 
had the navigable portion of the Bear River as a water- 
front, the Salt Lake as a waterway, Montana and Idaho 
as tributary trade centres, and the transcontinental rail- 
road ran “plumb” through it, connecting it with the 
East and the farther West. 

It also had needful rest and recreation for the tour- 
ist and the tired railroad men: to wit, nineteen saloons, 


two dance-halls and eighty syrens, commonly called 
268 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


“ girls.” Weekdays the enthusiastic citizens declaimed 
from dry-goods boxes by bonfire light upon topics cal- 
culated to make for the future of Corinne. Sunday was 
devoted to the present, for then the construction men 
came in from end o’ track. Most of the male citizens 
went hunting or fishing (says Beadle, as editor of the 
Corinne Reporter) ; and the “ girls ” had a dance or got 
drunk. As open-air entertainment there were dog-fights. 

Corner lots rose from $200, $300, $500 to $1000, 
$2000, $3000. Many a Colonel Sellers exhausted his 
vocabulary of adjectives. Ten thousand people within 
two years: that was the slogan. Alas! in three months 
the “Chicago of the Rocky Mountains” had lost its 
floating population and was unaccountably down to 400 
sobered residents. It is stronger to-day, but not yet 
the “ Queen City of the Great Basin.” 

Meanwhile, the panting graders and track-layers 
had founded the camp of Blue Creek. They were 
making short spurts now. Blue Creek was only eight- 
een miles onward from Corinne, and a welcome breath- 
ing spot. Life in Blue Creek was not so gay as in 
Corinne, but more rapid. Twenty-eight killings oc- 
curred in thirty days. Nevertheless the amenities of 
polite society were rigorously observed. A man who ap- 
propriated an undue amount of gravy paid the ultimate 
reckoning at once, levied by the gun of another diner; 
and a stranger to such Western discipline who inno- 
cently attempted to leave the table was very properly 
disciplined by being compelled to finish out the meal. 

269 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Etiquette demands that in cow-camp, lumber-camp, — 
sheep-camp and railroad camp one polish off one’s plate. 

Promontory town roared last but not least. As the 
junction of two great railroads, whither all the world 
should flock and where passengers from East and West 
be transferred, its future shone golden. It had thirty 
tent houses and one street; it had its drinking water, 
hauled only four miles; it had an eating house sixty 
feet long, purveying to some seventy-five graders, and 
occupied mainly by one table down the middle—the top 
of the table being used as a short-cut to seats by hob- 
nailed guests in a hurry. When the cook displeased 
they threatened to hang him. 

It had its “‘ Pacific Hotel” (fifteen by twenty feet), 
its “Club House” (with space but not membership 
limited), its ‘‘ strap” game, its ‘“‘ patent lock” game, 
“ ten-die”? game and open-air monte. That remnant of 
Hell on Wheels which had persisted through the three 
years’ journey from Nebraska was amply rewarded; at 
Promontory found another abiding place and a final 
grand halloo. Transcontinental tourists need never 
waste two hours here while waiting for connections. 

These “ roaring” towns which celebrated each suc- 
cessive stage of the march by the Pacific Railway west- 
ward across plains and deserts and mountains were 
unique. Some overcame their gambling spirit and set- 
tled down to legitimate prosperity ; others, builded liter- 
ally upon the sands, became of the sands, for they had 
staked their all in loaded dice. 

270 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


Prosperous North Platte to-day betrays not the 
slightest tokens of its former wild hurly-burly. An- 
other Julesburg—Julesburg IV—arose from the ashes 
of Julesburg III, but not upon the same dump. Sidney, 
Cheyenne, Laramie—there they are, the pupils of yes- 
terday and the masters of to-morrow rather than the 
blind devotees of to-day. Benton and Bryan had no 
substance at all upon which to feed after the insight 
store of short pleasures and quick profits had showed 
bottom. A new Green River was born of better plan- 
ning than the planning of the old. The Lucin cut-off 
of the transcontinental left Corinne, Blue Creek and 
Promontory to industry no longer dependent upon the 
chance traveller and the roisterer. 

There have been many other “roaring” towns 
and boom towns, in the advance of the nation’s pros- 
perity. Gold and silver, oil and wheat, fathered them, 
speculation fed them; but none went the pace of Jules- 
burg and Benton—the San Francisco of Sunday, the 
ages-dead Thebes of Monday, with no Bret Harte to 
record their crowded page of joys and sorrows, hopes 
and fears, their crimes, charities, and fantasies in gamut 
ranging through every human emotion. 

On the other hand, the Central’s Chinamen proved 
to be poor material for speculative practices. They 
drank not, they gambled only among themselves, they 
toiled but they did not spin; they offered no induce- 
ments to whiskey peddlers and monte men. The Mis- 


souri River border had its eyes turned westward, its 
271 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


mind inflamed by the projects of land agents, town 
boomers, and the ignes fatui of the transient schemes 
all fostered by the transition from stage coach to rail- 
road coach, from red rule to white rule. The Cali- 
fornia end of the transcontinental already was of the 
West. Californians were satisfied with their own pre- 
cincts; Nevada promised only mines, and the trend of 
population was toward, and not from, California. 

The thought of the Central focussed principally 
upon getting the road through the barren stretch to 
the producing goal in the Salt Lake Valley. Virginia 
City failed to contribute as anticipated; beyond the 
connection with Virginia, nothing material could be 
expected in the way of traffic for 500 miles. So with- 
out any accompaniment seeking prosperity and with- 
out any tendency to foster instant centres of new popu- 
lation, Charles Crocker and his assistant Strobridge 
travelled a trail of law, order and determination, their 
wheeled town being a town of their own, strictly limited 
and as far as possible whiskeyless, cardless, viceless. 

They were their own vigilantes also, protecting the 
employes from the inroads by the hopeful. This occa- 
sionally brought suits and threats of reprisal ; but rarely 
has a railroad, building through a lawless region, con- 
tributed so little to the spoils of civilization. 

Cisco was founded; might have been a Wasatch 
but never has been. California had flung its fling ten 


years before, had drained the hill cup of riotous living 
272 


THE “ROARING” TOWNS 


and was pursuing greed in Nevada. Cisco prospered 
with 7000 people devoted to lumbering, staging and 
grading, and of dissipations only reminiscent of Poker 
Flats and Hangtowns; when the construction crews 
moved on over, they left four hundred permanent 
residents, business educated. 
Truckee began clean, with every building of bright 
new lumber, Lake Tahoe as an inspiration and industry 
assured. Present Reno, Wadsworth, have their annals 
of boom freighting days, but they did not roar like Ben- 
ton, nor collapse through failure of breath. Humboldt 
flattened to eighty houses without a single occupant, but 
not through the railroad withdrawing the bung from its 
barrel; treasure fields distinct from the railroad called. 
Winnemucca, Argenta, Carlin enjoyed their ter- 
minus boom; the road passed on and they did not chase 
it; they waited for something else to turn up and pinned 
faith to the desert prospector. Elko “roared” as a 
mining depot, simple though not pure. 
The “ fast town ” of Elko, in the days of the White 
Pine mines excitement, close following but not con- 
nected with the rails: here upon the dreariest of deserts 
yet unwatered and unwashed, and sentinelled by the 
_barest of grim ranges; with its Commercial Street and 
‘its Railroad Street and its Silver Street and inevitable 
Main Street, through which the alkali dust swirled 

furiously, and where an umbrella was the recognized 
| trademark of the Eastern pilgrim; with its stores selling 
_ everything (excepting umbrellas) from a box of pills 
18 273 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


to a bottle of champagne; with its medicated springs, 
outbidding the Carlsbads of Europe, supplemented by 
Ung Gen, Chinese doctor, “ prepared to cure all dis- 
eases that may come to his notice”; with its Elko 
Independent, price twenty-five cents a copy; with its 
White Pine Saloon, wherein “the most.delicate fancy 
drinks are compounded by skillful mixtologists in a 
style that captivates the public and makes them happy ” ; 
with its Paiutes, Diggers, Greasers, Mongolians, desert 
rats, stage-drivers, freighters and millionaires, its Wan- 
dering Jew in the person of the “wickedest man west of 
the Rocky Mountains,” its long strings of pack mules, 
its dust-covered Concords, its tales of fortunes—all 
regardless of the rails that led now nobody particularly 
cared where. With its lumber at $100 a thousand, but 
with Chloride Flat, Yellow Jacket, the Eberhardt and 
such lodes, only 125 miles south, swelling the patronage 
from 400 to 20,000 in five months. 

However, the Central Pacific of the transcontinen- 
tal had gone on long before; had dropped an eating 
station named Toano ; was preparing to lay its ten miles 
in a day and rest at Promontory, its trail peopled mainly 
by the quick and but sparsely by the dead. 


xX 
TOURISTS TO END 0’ TRACK 


“THE Union Pacific and overland excursion had 
become too common,” laments the restless J. H. Beadle, 
Cincinnati Commercial man, in August, 1869. “ Every 
man who could command the time and money was eager 
to make the trip, and everybody who could sling ink 
became correspondents.” 

Consequently he branched off for southern Utah— 
but, lo and behold, the Pacific Railway was in prospect 
once more even to him, for in September he was again 
en route westward to end o’ track at the California 
coast. After all, there was nothing else to do. 

As between the Union Pacific and the Central Pa- 
cific lines the California project was the one that re- 
ceived the first attention from travellers. Reference 
has already been made to the Fourth of July excursion 
run from Dutch Flat to Sacramento in 1865—ante- 
dating by four months the flat-car excursion upon 
the Union Pacific under the auspices of the hopeful 
Doctor Durant. 

And reference had also been made to the Central 
excursion arranged for the Speaker Colfax party in 
August of the same year. 

This distinguished party had left Atchison, Kansas 
—the Missouri River terminus of the thriving Over- 

275 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


land Mail—May 22, outward bound in one of Ben 
Holladay’s last stages, under soldier escort, for San 
Francisco, with stoppages along the way. The per- 
sonnel, to wit, the Honorable Schuyler Colfax, five feet 
six, weight 140, age forty-two, six terms in Congress, 
“drinks no intoxicating liquors, smokes @ Ja General 
Grant, is tough as a knot, was bred a printer and editor,” 
of unbounded tact, tireless industry and no rough 
points—“‘ some people talk of him for President”; 
Lieutenant-Governor William Bross of Illinois and 
the Chicago Tribune editorial staff, “ hale and hearty in 
body and mind,” simple, unaffected, enthusiastic, and 
sturdy in principles; Albert D. Richardson, of the 
Greeley Tribune, Civil War correspondent, Bohemian 
in tastes, but addicted to black broadcloth and “ biled 
shirts,’ chews no tobacco, disdains whiskey but is a 
connoisseur of Catawba, “ carries a good deal of bag- 
gage, does not know how to play poker,” and as a 
young widower of thirty-five “ shines brilliantly among 
the ladies”; Editor Samuel Bowles, of the scholarly 
Springfield Republican, that dean in the New England 
press—and he himself a stanch New Englander with a 
mind broadly receptive to the new West; George Otis, 
special agent for the Overland Stage Company, who as 
representative of the princely Holladay thus personally 
conducts the little company and amuses it with his 
ready puns. 

They saw the gold mines of Colorado, the many 
wives of Utah, the silver lodes of Nevada, and in Cali- 

276 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


fornia learned of turnips weighing twenty-six pounds, 
beets 118 pounds, and squashes 265 pounds. And they 
toured over the Central Pacific Railroad. 

On the way out Editor Bowles had decided that the 
great bulk of the Pacific Railway (upon which all sign 
of progress was one small party of engineers, in Salt 
Lake City, who seemed to have lost their bearings), 
should be constructed in three years; the whole could 
be opened to travel in five years. He might safely 
have said four. 

At Sacramento he and his companions were to ex- 
claim over the progress of the western end of the 
building program which aroused from the Bowles pen 
the appeal to the East for an army of 50,000 picks and 
spades in 1867, 100,000 in 1868. That his appeal ap- 
parently may have had effect was proved to him upon 
his next trip out from the East, when in the summer 
of 1868, on the Wyoming desert, he “ witnessed here 
the fabulous speed with which the railroad was being 
built” at last, and Governor Bross, again his com- 
panion, “with stalwart blows upon their spikes” 
helped to pin down the last rail of the Atlantic slope 
and the first rail of the Pacific slope. 

But at Sacramento, in the summer of 1865 

“ Ex-Governor Leland Stanford, president of the 
Central Pacific Railroad, and other gentlemen engaged 


in building it, were kind enough to organize a pleasant 
excursion,” records Journalist Richardson. 
This extended up the line to Colfax, fifty-five miles 
277 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


(“nearly to the summit of the Sierras”), and on-— 
ward along the grade twelve miles by horse, around 


Cape Horn. 


“The rugged mountains looked like stupendous © 


ant-hills. They swarmed with Celestials, shovelling, 
wheeling, carting, drilling and blasting rocks and earth, 


while their dull moony eyes stared out from under im- — 


mense basket hats, like umbrellas. At several dining- 


camps we saw hundreds sitting on the ground, eating 
soft-boiled rice with chop-sticks as fast as terrestrials © 


could with soup-ladles.” 


By six-horse stage the excursion was continued 


from Gold Run, in a night trip to the summit (en route 
distributing mail to the survey camps) and on down ~ 


three miles to Donner Lake—“ blue, shining, and © 


sprinkled with stars, while from the wooded hill beyond 
glared an Indian fire like a great fiendish eyeball.” 
From headquarters at the Lake House here the 


Easterners were shown the location line.’ In the even- © 


ing, at the rude tavern— 

“The candles lighted up a curious picture. The 
carpet was covered with maps, profiles and diagrams, 
held down at the edges by candlesticks to keep them 


from rolling up. On their knees were the president, 


directors and surveyors, creeping from one map to an- 


other, and earnestly discussing the plans of their mag- 


nificent enterprise. The ladies of our excursion were 


grouped around them silent and intent, assuming live- 


liest interest in the dry details about tunnels, grades, 
278 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


excavations, ‘making height’ and ‘getting down.’ 
Outside the night wind moaned and shrieked, as if 
the Mountain Spirit resented this invasion of his 
ancient domain.” 

The first of the Union Pacific excursions, when in 
November Vice-President Durant, and General Sher- 
man as special guest, toured the fifteen miles from 
Omaha to Salings Grove, sitting upon nail-kegs on a 
flat-car, was an humbler matter. This, however, was 
far eclipsed by the Great Pacific Railway Excursion of 
1866 to celebrate the attainment of the rooth meridian, 
at the 247 mile-post, in 182 working days, or more than 
a year ahead of Federal requirements. 

Consulting Engineer Silas Seymour himself wrote 
a very entertaining little story of that early grand 
tour up the Platte Valley—not for 247 miles but 
for a full 285. 

Invitations had been sent by the company to the 
President of the United States, and his cabinet; to the 
foreign ministers, to the members of Congress, to the 
commanders of the army and navy, to the “ principal 
railroad men and leading capitalists throughout the 
country.” The railroads, steamboats and stages con- 
necting Omaha and New York were placed at the dis- 
posal of the prospective guests. 

The New York party, of 100 passengers, left on 
Monday evening, October 15, by the New Jersey and 
the Pennsylvania Central Railroad to Pittsburgh, by 
the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad to 

: 279 


on aaa 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Chicago ; by the Chicago and Northwestern to Denison, 
Iowa, thence by stage to Omaha; or by the Chicago, 
Burlington and Quincy and the Hannibal and St. Joseph 
to St. Joe, Missouri, thence by the packets Denver and 
Colorado up river, forty-eight hours of steamboating 
with bands playing and colors flying; and they all fore- 
gathered at Omaha on Monday morning, October 22. 
The major portion arrived well fed. The steam- 
boat menus, of old-time river glory, titillate the ravished 
senses of this degenerate day. Soup, fish, meats boiled 
and roasted, with sugar-cured ham and champagne 
sauce as crescendo; cold dishes, ten, including buffalo — 
tongue; entrées, thirty ; game—larded antelope, brazed 
bear, saddle of venison, mallard and teal ducks, larded — 
grouse, quails on toast, wild turkey, rabbit pot-pie; — 
vegetables eleven, relishes seven, pastries eighteen, des- — 
serts six, eked out with oranges, pecans, almonds, rais- 
ins, apples, figs, grapes, peaches, filberts, pears, tea, 
coffee and chocolate; Horn of Plenty, Pyramid of © 
Sponge Candy, Gothic Pyramid of Rock Candy, 
Nougat Vase, as ‘“‘ ornaments.” 
Stars attach to the names of the officials and guests; 
the printed columns in the Railway Pioneer (that — 
ephemeral journal especially issued) reads like a roll — 
of honor. President John A. Dix had been appointed ; 
minister to France, and sent his hearty regrets. Vice- 
President Durant, the indefatigable, headed the com- 
pany’s staff. General Superintendent Samuel Reed was 


ill, Assistant Operating Superintendent Hoxie “the 
280 


a ee 


a ee ee 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


Ubiquitous ” was master of ceremonies up the Missouri 
to Omaha, and his chief, Webster Snyder, conducted 
over the road. 

There were present, in addition, for the company: 
Directors Edward Cook, of Iowa; Sidney Dillon, of 
New York; C. A. Lambard and John Duff, of Massa- 
chusetts, and Congressman Charles T. Sherman, of 
Ohio; from the Government: Government Commis- 
sioners General J. H. Simpson, of Washington; Gen- 
eral Samuel R. Curtis, of Iowa; Colonel William 
M. White, of Connecticut; Engineers General Dodge, 
of Iowa, and Colonel Seymour, of New York; the 
two Casements. 

Among the guests: Senators J. W. Patterson, of 
New Hampshire; J. M: Thayer and T. W. Tipton 
(elect), of Nebraska; Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio; 
Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, with a Ballard rifle for ante- 
lope shooting, in which he had more success than in 
his subsequent gunning for the presidency and vice- 
presidency; the Earl of Arlie, England; Monsieur 
O’Dillon Barrot, secretary of the French legation ; Mar- 
quis Chambrun, of Paris; General John Bates, Major 
General Philip St. George Cooke the peppery, and his 
staff, of the Department of the Platte; John Crerar, 
of Chicago fame; the merry George Francis Train, 
wife “and maid”; Kinsley, the rising caterer—a wel- 
come accession; Joseph Medill, the Chicago Tribune 
chief ; Luther Kountze, the Omaha banker ; George M. 


Pullman, the sleeping-car inventor; Robert T. Lin- 
281 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


coln, of Chicago, and a nation’s love; Governor Alvin 
Saunders, of Nebraska; Chief Justice William Kellogg, 
of Nebraska; Secretary A. S. Paddock, of Nebraska; — 
Editor “Giles,” of the Council Bluffs Bugle; Editor 
Burke, of the Council Bluffs Nonpareil; John Jones— 
these and such as these, with their ladies and their 
scions, to the number of two hundred, not forgetting 
Photographers Carbutt and Hien, the Great Western 
Light Guard Band of Chicago, and Rosenblatt’s Band 
Of ot: Joe 

Omaha did itself proud with a ball and an exhibi- 
tion of all its Aladdin industries peculiar to its sudden — 
elevation as a railroad mart. And the excursionists, — 
bedecked with ribbons and rosettes, were “somewhat — 
astonished to find themselves, after a week’s journeying 
westward from New York, still among people of — 
wealth, refinement and enterprise.” 


“The excursion train [leaving at twelve o'clock, — 
October 23] consisted of nine cars drawn by two of © 
the Company’s powerful locomotives.” Deference evi- 
dently was accorded to the weight, mental, moral and 
financial, of the personnel embarked. At the rear, as 
balance, there was the Directors’ car, “ devoted to 
members of Congress and other distinguished guests, 
who felt desirous of making a critical examination of 
the road and adjacent country.” Next forward there 


was “the celebrated Government, or Lincoln car, the 


private property of Mr. Durant,” and occupied by him- 


self and personal party. Forward of this, four fine 
282 


TOURISTS TO' END’ O’ TRACK 


coaches built at Omaha, and now turned over to the 
excursionists en masse. Then the “ mess or cooking 
car”’—which is designated as always accompanying 
the Directors’ car as tender. Then a mail-car “ con- 
veniently fitted up as a refreshment saloon.” Then the 
baggage and “ supply ” car, and the engine “ profusely 
decked with flags and appropriate mottoes.” 

“The whole outfit presented a most imposing ap- 
pearance as it left the Missouri Valley and steamed 
away toward the Rocky Mountains.” 

Never will another such railroad excursion occur, 
in the history of the Republic; never again will a con- 
course like to this be introduced, a happy family, to the 
freedom of the plains. 

Kinsley catered—lunch was served at once through 
the cars; Joseph Medill, the Earl of Arlie, the Marquis 
Chambrun, George Pullman, Major General Cooke, 
Monsieur Barrot, John Crerar, George Francis Train, 
the Duffs, the directors, the commissioners, the sena- 
tors, John Joneses—they ate and quaffed; Rosenblatt’s 
and the Great Western Light Guard Band played; the 
officials—Durant, Dodge, the Casements, Snyder, 
Hoxie, Special Conductors Bunker and Colonel Gesner 
and the brakemen answered questions, and the train 
rolled on into the New West, following the wonderful 
transcontinental rails. 

At evening an illuminated encampment covering 
several acres of Columbus town was found awaiting 


occupants. Hoxie speedily announced supper. There 
283 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


was a war-dance by Major Frank North’s Pawnee — 
scouts—‘‘ and the congregation of lady and gentlemen 
spectators were only too glad to know that the Indians 
were entirely friendly.” After which, warned by the 
“waning moon and campfires,” the bursting Eastern- 
ers were stowed in family tents, where, upon soft hay 
mattresses under buffalo robes and blankets, they were — 
wooed to slumber by the howling of the distant wolf — 
and the “ subdued mutterings ” of the Pawnees. 

At dawn an alarming Indian serenade, of unearthly 
whoops and yells which demanded the quieting reas- 
surances of Vice-President Durant, General Dodge, — 
and others. A “sumptuous breakfast.” A journey 
onward. Farther along, the main encampment of the — 
Pawnee guardians of the road, and a halt for a sham _ 
battle in which mock Sioux were defeated and scalped 
by the Pawnees. Lunch. Supper and another large 
tented area at the 279 mile-post, thirty miles beyond © 
the 1ooth meridian. Miracle of miracles! Would 
wonders never end—and would the track never end? 

Yes, upon the morrow. Meanwhile telegraph office” 
and printing office were set up. In the morning a bath ~ 
all together in the Platte; breakfast ; meeting called for 
nine o'clock in the public square of this camp No. 2, 
U. P. R. R., Buffalo Co., Nebraska, for the purpose of 
“locating a city, the election of a Mayor, City Coun- 
cil,” etc.; announcement of a buffalo hunt for all in- 
clined to the same; and thereafter a trip to end o’ track, 
eight or ten miles on, where as an exhibition the Case- 

284 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


ment Paddies laid eight hundred feet of double rails in 
half an hour. 
In the evening, fireworks—a profusion 


ce 


shooting 
and whizzing through the air for more than an 
hour”; a concert at “ Bunker Hill” and a lecture 
upon phrenology, with the George Francis Train head 
as an object lesson. 

In the morning, again much picture-taking, pre- 
ceding the call “ All aboard” for homeward bound. 
On the way, a stop at the 1ooth meridian arch; an- 
other to inspect the prairie-dog town twenty-five miles 
square; another to view a night prairie fire, prepared 
in advance by the obliging and resourceful Durant. 

“ What surprise awaits us next?” 

“When, and where will these wonders cease? ” 

“We did not know that this was in the program!” 

After Omaha, Chicago once more; and a thanks- 
giving meeting in the Opera House (well reported by 
the Chicago Tribune), where full meed of praise was 
bestowed upon the railroad hosts, upon the Pacific 
Railway project as materialized, and upon those com- 
fort-makers, Pullman and Kinsley. 

No, there cannot be another excursion quite like 
this of the Sixties, in an emotional America spendthrift 
of sensibilities lavished upon the new and yet tribute to 
the old: when the senatorial frock coat was a toga and 
the senatorial presence was Jovian; when Patti sang 
and Edwin Forrest declaimed, and Ole Bull was master 


of the violin; when Artemus Ward and George Francis 
285 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Train lectured and General Tom Thumb toured and 
Petroleum V. Nasby wrote; when Murat Halstead 
edited the Cincinnati Commercial, Joseph Medill and 
Horace Greeley their Tribunes, and the satire and 
poetry of George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, 
were still preserved in household scrapbooks ; when the 
memory of Kossuth was green, and Edward, young 
Prince of Wales, had stood upon the balcony of the 
Continental Hotel in Philadelphia, gazing at the riot- 
ous celebration by the Lincoln “‘ Black Republicans ” ; 
when “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and P. T. Barnum’s mu- 
seums thrilled; when in the Far West beyond the Mis- 
sissippi the Holladay stages lumbered at schedule of 
five miles an hour across the plains and mountains, and 
in the East a Colorado quartz miner had introduced 
that astonishing luxury the sleeping car, wherein one 
might with propriety disrobe in public; when in the 
typical East no lady would be caught at large without 
her crinoline and balmoral, and in the typical West no 


gentleman without his “ shooting-iron ” 


and scalping- 
knife; when buffalo tongue and antelope steak vied 
with Delmonico’s terrapin, and new Eldorados with 
Wall Street; when there beyond the frontier Kinsley 
served, the Light Guard Band played, Train expatiated, 
the Pawnees danced, and broad-cloth and furbelow, 
transported upon the Bagdad carpet of the first trans- 
continental railway, picnicked gaily in the wild outland 
1600 miles from home. 


This summer Brevet Brigadier General James A. 
286 


POURISES TO END O’ TRACK 


Rusling also had viewed end o’ track, at Kearney, on 
his way by stage to inspect the army posts of the West. 
He briefly reported upon progress and hastened on, 
to write more at length upon the Central, then reaching 
out for Cisco and a winter station. 

The records of the early travellers from the Mis- 
souri River borderland form an index of the periodic 
march by the Pacific Railway. 

In May of 1867 Colonel Alexander K. McClure, 
Republican leader in Pennsylvania and later to estab- 
lish the stanch Philadelphia Times, first journeyed into 
the trans-Missouri West, on a tour to Salt Lake City. 
The Chicago and Northwestern had recently connected 
to Council Bluffs opposite Omaha, “ by throwing up a 
few feet of embankment on the usually level plains of 
Western Iowa and laying the superstructure without 
ballast.” The rate of speed over the uncertain tracks 
undermined by the spring thaws was from six to ten 
miles an hour, and interrupted by frequent wrecks; 
after a fast of thirty-six hours broken by hard-boiled 
eggs and bacon at an Irish section-house, the passengers 
were stranded at ten o’clock at night four miles from 
the Missouri. Here they waited twelve hours, and were 
conveyed, breakfastless, by improvised stage to the 
ferry. Time from Chicago, two and one-half days. 

The Union Pacific was complete to North Platte, 
293 miles. The trip out registered upon Colonel Mc- 
Clure by its lack of interest save for the buffalo herds, 


the antelope, the prairie-dogs, and a hundred miles 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


without sign of human habitation aside from a few 
station shanties. 

He found President Brigham Young torn between 
anticipation and apprehension; “ the day that the iron 
horse first sang his song in the valley of Utah dated the 
decline and fall of the Mormon ruler.” 

Vice-President Durant now travelled out in state 
with the Government directors, in a brand-new 
equipage—a Pullman “hotel car” christened the 
“Western World ”—that supplied sleeping berths at 
one end and at the other a kitchen from which meals 
were distributed. 

In September of the same year a second party of 
distinguished citizens travelled over the Union Pacific 
—this time from Omaha to milestone 460, halfway be- 
tween Julesburg and Cheyenne. The special train bore 
a portion of the United States “‘ peace commission ” to 
sit with the Sioux and the Cheyennes: General Sher- 
man (who upon his nail-keg in 1865 had lamented that 
probably at his age he could not expect to live out the 
completion of a transcontinental, but now with faith 
in the Casements and General Dodge had revived 
hopes), General Alfred Terry, the Hero of Fort Fisher, 
and Congressman John B. Henderson, of Missouri; 
also the young Henry M. Stanley, at this date only the 
correspondent from the Indian Country for the Mis- 
souri Democrat and the New York Herald, and with 
the Dark Continent unknown to him; and Frederich - 


Gerstaecker, of the Cologne Gazette, pursuing that ad-— 
288 


NMVOURISTS TO ENDO’ TRACK 


venture in western America which turned to gold under 
his pen. 

Reporter Stanley took breakfast in the Casement 
boarding-car at end o’ track. Incited by Captain D. B. 
Clayton, the track-laying superintendent, the U. P. 
force laid twenty-five pairs of rails, or seven hundred 
feet, in five minutes! 

“ At that rate,’ Stanley accepted, ‘“‘ sixteen and a 
half miles of track could be laid down in one day.” 

So they could, but they never were. 

Sixty-eight, that year of real conquest upon the 
plains and in the Rockies, following the years of con- 
quest in the Sierra, saw the remarkable influx along 
the U. P. of the newspaper excursionists, who wrote 
that people might read and run. It saw also an inspec- 
tion visit, the most notable yet. 

There had been some differences between the views 

of the company engineers as to the most practicable and 
thorough line, and of the contractors, who proposed 
lines more profitable for themselves. Consequently, 
stirred by the perplexed Government commissioners 
upon whom hinged the acceptance of the road, the 
interested General Grant and the lively General 
Sherman came out themselves in July to investi- 
.gate for the Government. General Grant was then 
slated for the Presidency. 
_ With them came General Sheridan, commanding 
ithe Military Division of the Missouri; General August 
Kautz, who in 1865 had led the colored troops into 
19 289 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


Richmond; General Joseph H. Potter, who had won 
his first brevet at the battle of Monterey, and others 
at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville; the doughty, 
hard-fighting and hard-swearing but altogether splendid 
old General William S. Harney, beloved by rank and 
file in spite of his temper; General F rederick T. Dent, 
Grant’s brother-in-law and West Point classmate, now 
lieutenant colonel of the Twentieth Infantry but brev- 
etted three times during the war; General Adam J. 
Slemmer, lieutenant colonel of the Fourth Infantry but 
wearing honors won at Murfreesborough, and now 
within two months of his death; U. P. Vice-President 
Durant (of course) and Director Sidney Dillon again. 

Generals were plentiful at this period; but as Gen- 
eral Dodge remarks: ‘“‘ Probably no more noted mili- 
tary gathering has occurred since the Civil War.” 

He was wired to meet the party at Fort Sanders, 
three miles south of new Laramie, west of the Black 
Hills, where Colonel John Gibbon, late commander of 
the Twenty-fourth Army Corps under Grant at Lee’s” 
surrender, guarded the railroad line against the proble- 
matical red protégés of last year’s “ peace commission.” F 

General Dodge had come in from the survey coun- 
try. A procession of the children attached to the post 
and to the railroad camps nearby was formed, met the 
special train at the station, and had the never-forgotten 
privilege of shaking hands with General Grant, The 
dispute over the grades was adjusted in the engineers’ 
favor, and the Durant Pullman conveyed the brilliant 

290 


Copyright by Union eee RR. 


THE GENERAL GRANT INSPECTING PARTY AT FORT SANDERS, WYOMING 
From left to right—Gen. August Kautz, Gen. 


» JULY, 1868 
Philip H. Sheridan, Mrs. Potter, Gen. Frederick Dent, Mrs. Gibbon, Gen. 
John Gibbon, Master John Gibbon, Gen. U.S. Grant, Katie Gibbon, Mrs. Kilburn, Allie Potter, Chief Engineer G. M. Dodge, 
eat Gen pen T. Sherman, Gen. William S. Harney, Dr. T. C. Durant, Gen. Adam Slemmer, Gen. Joseph H. Potter, 
en. Louis C, Hunt. 


- TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


party to end o’ track, then 100 miles farther on, at the 
western end of the Laramie Plains, or 670 miles from 
Omaha. The construction gangs hailed “Old Bill,” 
great “ Little Phil” and “ Unconditional Surrender ” 
with Union cheer and Rebel yell mingled. 

On the return eastward 15,000 persons greeted 
Grant at Omaha; among them the impecunious lawyer 
and amateur journalist J. H, Beadle, Southern Indi- 
anan, whom a graveyard cough, a family physician, a 
book-peddler fund, and a roving commission from 
Halstead’s Cincinnati Commercial had encouraged . 
to “ go west.” 

He now retraced the steps of the Grant generals, 
but not in a private car; saw much and wrote whereof 
he saw; was flat amidst the giddy whirl of Benton ter- 
minus, 690 miles out on the edge of the Red Desert; in 
role of trudging mule-skinner beat the rails into the 
Salt Lake Valley; and having served an unprofitable 
apprenticeship as Gentile editor to the Latter Day 
Saints eventually rode home upon the completed road. 

Thus they chased end o’ track on the Union Pa 

cific: soldiers, statesmen, writers and pleasure-seekers, 
month to month finding it farther and farther on, its 
wonder undiminished. Nor was the Central slighted, 
although still remote to public inspection. 

Bowles, Colfax and Richardson had proclaimed it ; 
General Rusling had praised it; in February of 1868 

the General W. J. Palmer party, having surveyed from 


Fort Wallace of western Kansas to San Diego for an 
201 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


extension of the Kansas Pacific to Southern California 
(a route the forerunner of the Santa Fé trademark), 
faced homeward over the Central from Sacramento. 
An engine to pull and an engine to push rolled the 
wayfarers up to Cisco. The mountain scenery ap- 
pealed to Dr. William Bell, the chronicler, as “ Alpine 
in character”; the pines were buried to their branches 
in the snow; one pass reminded of the Col de Balme 
into the Val de Chamonix. 

At Cisco the warmed cars were exchanged for the 
Overland Mail Company sledges and forty feet of snow 
underneath; at Donner Lake transfer was made into 
mud-wagons, with two feet of mud underneath; and at 
the Black Hills the stage journey veered south to 
Denver, for all traffic on the Union Pacific had been 
stopped by snow on the plains eastward. 

Charles Loring Brace, the Yale schoolman and the 
newsboys’ friend, likewise inspected to Cisco this 
spring ; by climb “ slow and careful,” as befitting ascent : 
awheel of the “ American Alps”; found the project 
comparable only with the Austrian Government’s Bren- 
ner Pass Railroad, in the Tyrol; from the summit 
beyond Cisco thought upon “ the fearful wilderness 
between the Sierras and Salt Lake,” bare of fuel and 
timber; and with all credit rendered to the energy of 
the Californians, reflected that “the cost of the road 
and the great expense of running it will always be an 
obstacle to cheap freights or low rates.” 


“Men experienced in these matters doubt if they, 
292 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


[the transcontinental roads] ever carry freights of im- 
portance from one coast to the other, except the light- 
est and most valuable. But they created a large local 
traffic, and find their great profits from way-business.” 
In this last sentence Brace was a prophet unreckoned. 

There should not be omitted the Government com- 
‘missioners—most assiduous of all the road inspectors 
at large, although rivalled by the Government directors. 

Theirs was the duty of passing upon the track in 
sections of twenty miles. Their faithfulness is demon- 
strated in the tabulated reports, comprising thirty-six 
trips over the U. P. in three years and a half, inspecting 
stretches, of which the longest was forty miles, all the 
way from Omaha to the 1033rd mile-post, five miles 
out of Ogden. 

Some untoward incidents slightly marred the rec- 
ords. One official suggested an approval fee of 
$25,000; in order to lose no time in quibbling, when the 
race with the Central was particularly hot the company 
shunted its temporarily unwelcomed mentors over a 
ten-mile leg of Echo Canyon in the night; but as a rule 
the commissioners and directors were open-minded and 
fairly met. They might not have been railroad men, 
but they were patriotic. 

A special car was placed at the disposal of com- 
missioners and directors. Sometimes it was the super- 
intendent’s car, sometimes the Dodge “ travelling ar- 
senal,”’ sometimes the Durant Pullman, and occasionally 
the Lincoln car. 

293 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


This car had been built at the Military Car Shops, 
Alexandria, Virginia, in 1864, for the use of the Presi- 
dent and to meet his ideas. Heavy boiler iron was 
placed between its inner and outer walls; there were 
kitchen and dining service, and an extraordinarily long 
couch to accommodate his many inches. Lincoln was 
very fond of his acquisition—found much comfort 
therein ; and it formed his funeral bier on the last jour- 
ney from Washington to Springfield. 

Doctor Durant purchased it from the Government 
to be his own special; but becoming enamored of the 
Pullman cabinet-work creations and all their conve- 
niences, he transferred it to the Union Pacific yards at 
the close of 1866. Thereafter it was at the disposal of 
the Government guests, when they did not stand out for 
a Pullman themselves. 

Naturally, a certain sacredness pertained to the car 
which had been the travelling home of the martyred 
President; but the boiler-plate walls proffered a con- 
siderable appeal to those Eastern gentlemen who, essay- 
ing the plains of the ’60’s, preferred utility to ornament. 

The commissioners for the Central were mainly 
of California and Nevada. It appears that they were 
not so constant in their attendance upon the track-laying - 
as their Union Pacific colleagues. In 1867 they had : 
accepted to the California line, 138 miles, with pro-— 

+ Proper credit, however, should be given to statements by 


authority that President Lincoln never had occasion to use thisg 
car. On its first official trip it bore only his body. 


294 


f 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


_ visional acceptance of seventy-seven miles beyond. 


August 28, 1868, they had accepted forty more miles, or 


- to the 255 mile-post; September 24, seventy-five miles 
_ to the 330 mile-post, February 18, 1869, 200 miles 


at the clip, to the 530 mile-post; and concluded when 


July 31 they approved of the remaining 160 miles 


_ to Promontory. 


As soon as the date was declared for the joining 


of the tracks which should open the whole Pacific 


Railway to traffic, East and West prepared to make 
the grand tour. 
On May 3 the first detachment of travellers desig- 


nated to go through to the Coast by rail left the Atlantic 


border for Chicago, via the New York Central and 
Lake Shore Railroads; thence by the Northwestern 
for Council Bluffs and the ferry to Omaha. 

Of their adventures the worthy W. L. Humason, 
Massachusetts bred, is the chronicler in his eminently 
New England tale “From the Atlantic Surf to the 
Golden Gate,”’ or “ First Trip on the Great Pacific Rail- 
road.” This was the pioneering train which failed to 
afrive in time for the May 8 date at Promontory; and 
what with vigilantes en route, Indian scares, washouts, 
and a wild night at Wasatch, where one death oc- 


_ curred under the car windows, nobody to-day will envy 


Mr. Humason his “ first trip.” 
At Promontory, May 11, there was a wait of all 
day. The Central train appeared at dark, but lacked 


sleeping-cars. The meeting of the tracks had beaten the 


205 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


delivery of such equipment by two months. So we may 
dismiss the excursionists, dusty and heavy-eyed, where — 
they meet the first of the east-bound trains at Colfax 
and are bombarded with queries “ concerning the road, 
the eating-houses, and the Indians.” 

The passengers from California and-way points 
arrived at Omaha on May 16: 500 of them, in two 
sections. Two trains a day each way were soon needed. 
The Pacific Railway had opened a new world. 

The regular schedule between Sacramento and 
Omaha was five days; between Sacramento and the 
Atlantic coast, six and a half days. For example, by — 
schedule of May, 1869, one left Sacramento early in © 
the morning of a Monday; arrived at Ogden about 
12:30 of Tuesday noon; arrived at Omaha at 10 a.m. 
Friday ; arrived at Chicago at 10 a.m. Saturday ; arrived © 
at New York shortly after noon of Sunday. San 
Francisco added twelve hours to the trip. § 

Counting the rail and steamer connections for San 
Francisco, the first-class fare across continent then was 
$173; sleeping-car rates, $2 a day and $2 a night; meals — 
at the dining stations, from $1 to $1.25—“‘a pretty 
steep price to pay for fried ham and potatoes,” Mr. 
Humason submits. i 

The through tariff was reduced, in time. Rates be- P 
tween Omaha and San Francisco remained at $100 
first-class, $75 second-class, $40 “ emigrant ’”—which — 
might sound attractive did the prospective tourist not 


comprehend that the emigrant cars were attached to 
296 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


the freight trains, with schedule uncertain. The rate 
across continent was $139 first-class, $109 second-class, 
emigrant $65. Children under five years, free. Pull- 
man: New York and Chicago, $5 ; Chicago and Omaha, 
$3 ; Omaha and Ogden, $8; Ogden and San Francisco, 


$6. Total, $22. 


The Central was pronounced the better built, the 
Union Pacific the more interesting. However, the 
Union division was soon improved over its initial con- 
struction. It had been built upon the sound railroad 
principle of a well-surveyed route as a basis; for no 
tinkering with equipment can make a good road out 
of a poorly-located line. 

The great Pacific Railway now entered into busi- 
ness with colors flying. The American people discov- 


_ ered that their speculative dreams were more than real- 


ized. No such trains de luxe had been known in the 
East like to those rumbling across plains and deserts. 
and mountains in the Far West. The change from the 
toilsome, cramped Concords was miraculous. 

Upon the Union Pacific the best Pullman palace 
and sleeping cars that the new corporation in Chicago 
could turn out were put into service. It was good 
advertising—the reports in the newspapers and periodi- 


cals by rapturous travellers paid as much attention to 


the conveniences as to the scenery. 
In May of 1870, after the transcontinental route 


_had been in operation only a year, the famous “ Hotel 


Train” from Omaha clear through to San Francisco 
297 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


without transfer was tried. It was the mother of the 
future Pullman limiteds: left Omaha weekly, with — 
equipment of three sleepers, a diner and a buffet or 


“lounging ” car; excess fare to Ogden, $10. The ter- 
minus proved to be Ogden, for the Central Pacific 


finally declined to join the scheme. Eventually the 


service was discontinued. 


This same month the Boston Board of Trade rec- 


ognized the spirit of the day by chartering a train 
through from the Atlantic to the Pacific. A daily 
paper, entitled the Trans-Continental, was published en 
route, and by resolutions of the passengers called atten- 
tion of New England to the enterprise exhibited in 
Far Western traffic. 

In September another triumph in luxurious rail- 
roading occurred, when by invitation of the general 
traffic agents of the Union Pacific and the Central Pa- 
cific a large delegation of Eastern and Southern gen- 
eral agents was taken from Chicago to Ogden in a 
special train, composed of five Pullman drawing-room 
and sleeping-cars, a smoking-car, two lounging-cars 


fitted with couches, easy-chairs and a “stationary 


organ,” and a baggage-car ; thence to San Francisco by 
six of the Central’s “Silver Palace” sleepers and a 


smoker—the superintendent’s private car, supplied with 
California fruits and wines, being attached at the rear. 


Before adopting the Pullmans the Central Pacific 


made shift with its independent brand of sleeping and 


lolling accommodations—the Silver Palace cars. In 
208 


: 
7 
: 
: 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


the opinion of travellers, these were inferior to the 
Union’s Pullmans: they were plainer, and lacked the 
obliging special conductor. In his stead the negro porter 


officiated as both officer and private—a source of dis- 


satisfaction to those tourists who out of much petting 
had already grown captious. — 

The facile Mr. Pullman had followed his “ hotel 
car,” the Western World, which so fascinated impres- 
sionable Doctor Durant, with his regular dining-car, the 
Delmonico, in 1868; and this innovation was being 
used upon Eastern roads. The Pacific Railway clung 
to the system of meal stations on such a long haul as 
that comprised by its schedule. 

In truth, at the first some of them, particularly 
upon the desert, were execrable—as attested by the 
objector, Tourist Humason, and others. Their offer- 
ings seem to have been the old-time greasy, dirt-infested, 
hard-fried menus of the stage stations, where if the 
traveller didn’t like the mustard he might help himself 
to the pepper sauce. 

But speedily they revised their dishes, in tribute to 


: finicky patrons fromafar. At Grand Island, Nebraska, 


“they give you all you can possibly eat’; Sidney spe- 
cialized in antelope steak, and, for breakfast, “ there 
were given us eight little dishes apiece, containing hot 
beefsteak, two slices of cold roast antelope, a bit of cold 
chicken, ham and poached eggs, a couple of boiled pota- 
toes, two sticks of sweet corn, stewed tomatoes, and 


_ four thin buckwheat ‘ hot cakes’ laid one on top of the 


299 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


other,” all to be disposed of by the vehicle of one knife 
and fork in thirty minutes. Surely nobody but a Brit- : 
isher could have objected to this al fresco lay-out. . 
Cheyenne’s dining-room was a perfect museum of | 
big-game heads staring down upon the tables. Laramie ~ 
supplied famous beef from the Laramie Plains; isolated : 
Green River of the Wyoming desert bragged of its bis- 
cuits; Evanston, high up in the Wasatch, of its moun- 
tain trout and Chinese waiters; Elko, Winnemucca and 
Battle Mountain on the Central’s Humboldt Plains of 
their California fruit centre-pieces, their vegetables, 
range beef and spring water; Humboldt of its apples; 
Colfax in the Sierra of its fish and fresh vegetables. 
Meals were one dollar greenback, or west of Ogden 
were seventy-five cents silver—except that at Lathrop, 


near San Francisco, they were fifty cents. Many a 
passenger looked forward to Lathrop the generous. 
Thus the Far East and the Far West toured across, 
back and forth; over mountains and through desert, in 
their Pullman Palace and Silver Palace domiciles con- 
nected by draw-bar and link-pin, twitched along by the 
brass-bound Colorado, General McPherson, Rogers- 
119, Jupiter-60, the Tiptop, the Texas, the Hurricane 
and the Gladiator ; and the wonder ever grew. 
The pronounced features of the overland travel by 
half a dozen railroads to-day were concentrated and 
accentuated by the one road then: the California 
Forty-niner, upon a train for the first time in twenty 


years, returning “home” in six days over the route 
300 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


upon which he once had toiled for six months; the 
alkalied desert prospector, spending the last of his grub- 

stake to “ get out” and recoup; the bullwhacker, rock- 
ing along at a steady sixteen and eighteen miles an 
hour, and gazing superciliously at the old-fashioned 
prairie schooners and deep-bellied Conestogas plodding 
over the plains at their two and a half miles an hour; 
the San Francisco merchant and banker, on a business 
flier to New York; the white-faced, gentlemanly 
gambler, always agreeable to helping “pass the time 
away ” by alittle game of cards; the “ States” tourist, 
wide-eyed for buffalo, Indians and prairie-dogs; the 
flat-chested, hectic health-seeker, fearful of the eleva- 
tions, warned to move slowly when he stepped out upon 
Sherman Summit, 8000 feet, but already “ feeling 
better ” ; the army officers bound to their frontier posts 
by steam instead of by saddle or ambulance, and the 
naval officers short-cutting to their Atlantic or Pacific 
stations; the globe-trotter European with his questions. 
and his notebook. 

For the Continent sent its emissaries to witness and 
partake. This was the longest railroad and the highest 
in the world—a piece of Yankee legerdemain. The 
Britisher himself yielded to admiration. He compared 

the plains and mountain comfortable travel in the New 
World to the first-class trains out of his own London, 
and concluded to write to The Times. The scenery 
along the great highway enthused his pen and provided 


him with material for enlightening volumes. There 
| 301 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


were a few free-and-easy customs that somewhat 
rankled, but in the main he warmed with just apprecia- 
tion. That beloved emigrant of 1876, Robert Louis 
Stevenson, magician in words, voiced him in paying the — 
meed: “It seems to me, I own, as if this railway were — 
the one typical achievement of the age in which 
we live.” 
Guidebooks, of course, sprang up full-bloom. - 
Among the first, Samuel Bowles’s rehashed and boiled- 
down ‘“‘ The Pacific Railroad—Open. How To Go: 
‘What to See.” Simultaneous, Crofutt’s “ Trans-Con- 
tinental Tourists’ Guide,” semi-annually issued. Then 
Williams’s “ Pacific Tourist and Guide Across the 
Continent,” and Lester’s “‘ The Atlantic to the Pacific. 
What to See, and How to See It.” 
Compendiums of kindly wisdom, these: 
“It is not customary, it is not polite, it is not right 
or just for a lady to occupy one whole seat with her 
flounces and herself, and another with her satch 
parasol, big box, little box, bandbox and bundle.” 
“Fee your porter on the sleeping-car always—a 
moderate allowance, twenty-five cents per day, for 


day’s travel.” 

“Prejudices against sleeping-cars must be con 
quered at the start. They are a necessity of our lo 
American travel.” 

“The traveller notices with interest the ev 
frequent wind-mills which appear at every station, and 
are such prominent objects over the broad prairi 

302 


THE “LINCOLN CAR” 


Acquired by the Union Pacific in 1866 and used as a directors’ car during 
construction days 


INTERIOR OF AN EARLY PULLMAN CAR, U.P.R.R. 
By Courtesy of Union Pacific System 


Saran 


TOURISTS TO END O’ TRACK 


Probably no finer specimens exist in the 

United States than are found on the lines of this road.” 

“Tn packing your little lunch-basket, avoid tongue, 

by all means, for it will not keep over a day or two, and 

its fumes in a sleeping-car are anything but like those 
from ‘ Araby the blest.’ ” 


XI 
CHECKING UP. 


ScarcEty had the Promontory Summit celebra-— 
tion been concluded when the two companies proceeded 
to bargain over the common terminus directed by Con- 
gress to be “at or near Ogden.” The exact distance 
by Union Pacific track from Ogden comput ted at 53.56 
miles. The Union Pacific offered forty-five miles of © 
this for $4,000,224.96. Washington scaled the price 
down to $3,000,000; and for forty-seven and one-half — 
miles, to within about five miles of Ogden, the Central 
paid the $3,000,000, largely in bonds, which reduced — 
the cash consideration to $2,698,620. The remaining © 
five miles were later leased. Thus the Central got to 
Ogden after all. 

In June, 1870, it absorbed the Western Pacific, 
which had been its protégé for some time. This rounded © 
out the all-rail route from New York to San Francisco. - | 

The Union Pacific was rather in a hole as regard- 
ing its work between Ogden and Promontory. Con- 
gress hadinterfered without warrant to quash a 
winning game ; and moreover the Central, by expending 
some $700,000, appeared designing to build into Ogden — 
in defiance of the U. P. tracks. The Big Four had nil 
notion of resting content with their eastern terminal 
marooned in the desert. 

Upon _contract figures the Union Pacific Railroad 


arene 
304 


~ 


CHECKING UP 


from Omaha to Ogden cost $93,546,287.28 ; the United 
States Pacific Railway Commission ail that the 
actual cost to the contractors was $50,720,958.94, and 
further asserted that the real outlay had been only 
$38,000,000. The expert who was put at work upon 
the company books eighteen years after the Promon- 
tory Summit celebration found sums indicating that 
the cost of the road to Promontory was $98,309,880.77 ; 
also, to date of December 31, 1869, there were total 
construction hares of $88,500,000, $100,000,000, 
and nd in between He complained of the bookkeeping. 

Figured i contract estimates the cost of the Cen- 
tral Pacific Railroad of California, to the company, 
from Sacramento to Promontory, was $71,116,828.15. 
Upon the company books the construction expendi- 
tures to the close of 1869 were $85,401,554.76—and 
again $94,000,000. 

The guidebooks’ statement that the Pacific Railway 
cost over $181,000,000 may not have been far off; asa 
matter of fact, the longer one summed and the more one 
examined the accounts the larger and more perplexing 
grew the totals, for such a railroad never is “com- 
pleted ” in the full sense of the word. The meeting of 

the rails at Promontory was only the end of a para- 
-graph, and the past expenditures trooped forward into 
‘the reckoning of the present and the future. 

_ The Central Pacific builders had started out upon 
their own initiative and at their own risk—and here 
was their road. Of the Union Pacific builders the Gov- 


305 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC sik visi | 
} 


ernment had demanded another road—and here it was, 
too. “ Five eminent citizens ” were appointed by Con- 
gress to inspect and render verdict. They inspected 
in August and September, 18609. - : 
They found the Union Pacific with a 1, location 
line highly creditable to the engineers and to be a road 
that “ compared favorably with a ‘majority of the first- 
class roads 1 in the United States.” tee recommended 


They found the ‘Centeat with a ie adequate tal 
the purpose, and “capable of doing its business with 
safety and dispatch.” They recommended $576,650 
in improvements. 

In Government bonds there were issue ; 
To the Union Pacific, $27,236, 512, face value, dial 
counted upon the market to "§27,145,163.28; to the 
Central Pacific, $25,885,120, face value, turned into” 
gold at a discount of about $7,000,000. 

The Union Pacific issued its own first mortgage 
bonds in the sum of $27,213,000; the Central’s o 
first mortgage bonds aggregated $23,349,000. 

Of land there was due the Union Pacific 11,309,844 
acres valued at $1.25 an acre—but a considerable por- 
tion worth not fifty cents in the beginning; to the Cen- 
tral Pacific, 8,000,000 acres, of like variation. As sold 
thése lands were averaging $4.50 an acre—a tribute te 
the influence of the railroad upon barren ground. 

Before pursuing the payments of bonds and la 


the careful Secretary of the Interior wished to know 
306 


CHECKING UP 


whether or when the Pacific Railway contract with the 
Government had been completed. In course of time 
and controversy the Secretary of the Treasury alleged 
that the Central Pacific had been completed July 16, 
1869; the Union Pacific, November 6. The Govern- 
ment directors of 1873 proffered that the two roads had 
been completed according to specifications June 30, 
1870; a special commission of 1874 set the date of 
completion at October 1, that year; the Supreme Court 
of the United States inclined to November 6, or there- 
abouts, 1869, again. However, during the discussion 
the Pacific Railway had been operating right along, 
and giving returns to the Nation commensurate with its 
outlay, although not unmolested by the critics. 

The Government had profited at once by raising the 
price of public lands contiguous to the line—Platte 
Valley lands, which to Reporter Stanley had appeared 
“to afford meagre chances for the agriculturist,” and 
upon which, in 1865, he had counted from the stage- 
coach fifteen hundred skeletons of oxen, horses and 
mules—from $1.25 an acre to $2.50. The Overland 
stages had been carrying 1000 pounds of mail daily on 
a contract of $1,800,000 a year, schedule for delivery 
from the Missouri to California, during eight months 
‘of the year, sixteen days; in 1870 6000 pounds daily 
were being delivered in four days and a half, be- 
tween Omaha and San Francisco, at a year’s expense 
of $513,000. 
| Quick delivery and low freight charges spelled ruin 

307 


LA Ls 


BUILDING THE PACIFIC RAILWAY 


for Pacific coast merchants caught imprudently over- 
stocked ; 7000 teamsters on the plains and deserts were 
thrown out of work, but the annual expense of $8,000,- 
000 in transportation was reduced to $1,300,000. 

The military departments and General Sher- 
man were jubilant. Troops could now be-forwarded 
at the speed of 500 miles in twenty-four hours—a dis- 
tance that previously would have required a full month 
of “painful marching.” The solution of the Indian 
wars was seen; but that arrived more slowly by fact 
than by fancy. The Santa Fé and the Northern Pacific 
and the Southern Pacific were yet needed. They were 
coming. In less than two years after the joining of th 7 
first transcontinental’s tracks, the Northern Pacific, th 
Atlantic and Pacific and the Texas Pacific had been 
launched under Government auspices. 

The people of the United States continued thei 
lively interest. In 1869 the Central Pacific handled al 
most 30,000 through passengers. In 1870 the Unio: 
Pacific passengers numbered 142,623. These were bu 
the feeble advance tricklings of a mighty flood. 

In 1869 the population of the five States and Terri 
tories traversed by the Pacific Railway was 820,000; 
within a year it was over a million. The “ uninhabit 
able waste” assumed to extend, with break of only 
the Salt Lake Valley, from 200 miles west of Omah 
to the California border aroused and opened its boso 
for the magic touch of water. And as if in answer, the 
rain-belt soon began to march westward at the rate o 
eight miles a year. 


308 


' Achievement, first authorita- 
tive tip on, 108 
| “Act of 1862,” 31 
protests against, 38 
utterances of opponents of, 
38, 39 
of 1864, 65, 96, 104 
of 1865, 105, 106 
of 3866, 124 
Alps, the American, 292 
| American army engineers in 
France, 13 
river bridge, cost of, 103 
| Ames, Oakes, 71, 72, 130, 141, 
142, 153, 167, 179 
_ Ames, Oliver, 72, 73 
Arsenal, travelling, a, 243 
| Assistance of Military, 80 
| Barlow, Dr. Samuel, 16 
Battle, sham, 284 
| Beadle, J. H., 201 
Benton, founding of, 171, 263, 
264 
Benton, Senator Thomas H., 16, 
h 18, 10, 21, 25 
‘Berthoud Pass, 136 
/ Black Hills, discovery of cross- 
ing of the, 140 
exploration of, 152 
Blickensderfer, Jacob, Jr., 166 
‘Blue Creek, life in, 269 
Boggs, Lilburn W., 16 
Bolt-droppers, records of, 203 


INDEX 


Bonds, appreciation of, 108 
delay in issuing, 97 
hypothecating of, 98 

Boston Board of Trade, trip of 
the, 298 

Bowers, Brookes, 246, 247, 250 

Bowles, Samuel, 82, 138, 255, 
276, 277, 291, 302 

Breakfast, a sumptuous, 284 

“Breaking of ground,” 50 

Bridge, the Devil’s Gate, 211 

Bridger, Jim, legend of, 137, 
138 

Browne, Percy T., 236-240 


Cahoon, Tom, 251, 252 
California Central line, con- 
nection with, 103 
contributions of, 207 
Hotel, the, 267 
passengers from, 206 
railroad legislation of 1863- 
64, 59 
routes to, 23 
trend of population toward, 
272 
Capital, increasing the, 92 
stock, disposal of, 96 
Carriers, records of, 203 
Casement Brothers, track-lay- 
ing contract of the, 172 
Casement, Dan, 74 
Casement, General “Jack,” 74, 


156, 159, 170, 174, 259 


309 


INDEX 


Celebration, cost of, 227, 229 
Central Pacific Railroad, ad- 
vance of the, 128 
apportioning of assign- 
ments, 51 
cost of, 305 
commissioners 
204 
earnings for year, I12 
lavish financial backing 
of, 109 
financial statements of 
executives, 52 
goal of founders of, 123 
inception of, 29 
initial sale of stock, 52, 53 
march of the, 188 
men and methods, 41 
merging of, 41° 
organization, 45 
progress of, 67, 68, 96 
terminal bases of, 254, 255 
the search for capital, 53, 
54 
track-laying 
the, 182 
year’s record of, 189 
Central route, 25 
Ceremony, a pretty little, 222 
Checking up, 304 
Cheyenne, first trains into, 159 
founding of, 151, 152 
“Magic City of Plains,” the, 
260, 261, 262, 
the grade to, 154 
Cheyennes, attacks by, 243-250 
Chicago and Northwestern con- 
nection, the, 287 
the return to, 285 
Chief Red Cloud, warning of, 
233 


for the, 


record of 


310 


Cisco, arrival at, 117 
founding of, 272 4 
Cisco, John J., 118 y 
City, locating a, 284 ~ 8 
Civil War, ending of, 144 
Clark, Stephen, 237, 238 
Clearing, cost of, 119 
Coal, examinations for, 145 
discovery of, 154 : 
Colfax, Schuyler, 106, 108 d 
Commission, powers of, 33 
the peace, 288 . 
Commissioners, Government, 
faithfulness of, 203 
the Government, 293 
Committee, the vigilance, 262 
Company, the Contract and 
Finance, 182 
Completign, difficulties of, 103 
of track, delay in, 91 
Congress, interference of, 304 
Mormon petition to, 26 j 
petition to, 19 
Conquest, the year of real, 289 
Construction, amount of for 
year, 112 
assignment of contract for, 
106 
cost of, for year, 112 
for 1867, 163 
to rooth meridian, 148 
Contest, the winter, 192 
Continent, fare across the, 
207 
Contract, ending of the Am 
179 
letting of, 89 
Contractors, allegations of, 1 
Corrine, locating of as termi 
base, 197 


a 


INDEX 


Corrine, “Queen City of Great 
Basin,” the, 268, 269 
price of lots in, 260 
resources of, 268 
Crédit Mobilier, the, 90, 93, 129 
~ 130, 148, 170 
Crews, the rivalry between, 176 
Crocker, Charles, 44, 68, 102- 
105, 109, 116, 122, 125, 160, 177, 
182, 183, 196, 199, 207, 214, 272 
Curtis, Samuel R., 27 


Delegation, the California, 206 
Denver, founding of, 27 
importance of as traffic point, 
135 
Deputation, the Salt Lake capi- 
tal, 216 


Desert, survey of, 133 
the Nevada, 186 
the Utah, 184 
Dey, Peter A., 81 
resignation of, 90 
Dillon, Sidney, 42, 75, 176, 212, 
25, 222, 228, 281 
Directors, decision of, 105 
Discipline, western, 269 
Ditty, the plains and desert, 179 
Dix, General John A., 85 
Dodge, Major General Gren- 
ville M., 26, 75, 83, 120, 133, 
140, 148, 159, 163, 165, 167, 179, 
192, 220, 233, 235, 243, 259, 281, 
284, 288, 200 
Dollar, gold value of, 97 
Duff, John, 74 
Durant, Thomas C., 32, 73, 88, 
QI, 198, 199, 215, 221, 229, 280, 
284, 285, 288, 200 
“Dutch Flat” route, the, 47, 48 


Earnings, gross, 107 
net, for 1867, the, 164 
East, celebrations in the, 224 
sending of messages to, 221 
the excursion train from the, 
210 
Eddy, J. M., 235, 236 
Edmundson, William, 251, 252 
Elko, the “fast town” of, 273, 
274 
Elm Creek, attack on, 251 
Emigrant Gap, the famous, 117 
Empire, effort to halt march of, 
234 
Encampment, an_ illuminated, 
283 
End o’ track, tourists to, 275 
Engineering, difficulties of, 114 
Engineers, difference of views 
of, 280 
survey of the, 165 
Engines, cost of, 98-100 
freight rates on, 99 
Government tax on, 99 
Estimates, 25 
Evans, James A., 166 
Excavation, cost of, 196 
Excursion, a pleasant, 277-279 
first Union Pacific, 279 
the Central, 275-277 
the Great Pacific Railway, 
279-285 
Exhibition, track-laying, 285 
Expense, annual, reduction of, 
308 
operating, 181 
Experiment, suécess of, 246 


Factions, different, 22 
Financial aid by Government, 35 


311 


INDEX i 

i 

Finish, the, 200 Hodges, F. S., 241 a 
the race to the, 165 Hold-up, the first, 229, 230 .| 

“ First-class road,” definition of, Holladay, Ben, 32 | 
13I, 132 Hopkins, pay 43, 46 t 


First rail, laying of, 94 

Force, increase of, 114 

Fourth of July excursion, the, 
275 

Frémont, John C., 88 


Grade, establishment of ninety- 
foot, 141 

extension of, 95 

Grades, abandoning of, 120 
the Mormon, 180 

Grading, difficulties of, 184 
extension of, 127 

Grain, cost of, 143 

Granite, hardness of, 118, 119 

Grant, General U. S., 175, 280 

“Grave,” the laying of a, 106, 
197 

Gray, Thomas, 14 

Greeley, Horace, 27 

Green River City, 265, 266 

Green River-Ogden division, 
completion of the, 169 

Grinnell, George Bird, 244, 245 

Grizzly Hill tunnel, meeting of 
headings in, 115 

Gold, quotations on, 105 
the land of, 188 

Government provisions, 37 


Hallett, Samuel, 88, 89 
Hand-car, derailing of, 246 
Harte, Bret, 271 

“ Hell on Wheels,” 255 
Henshaw, Gregory, 247, 250 
Hewes, David, 208 

Hills, King of the, 259 


312 


“Hotel car,” a, 288 


“Hotel Train,” the famous, 297 i 


House Roll 364, adoption of, 31 t 
Humason, W..L., 205 ! 
Huntington, Collis P., 32, 43, i 
IOI, 113, 182, 192, 198, 207, 214. ; 
. 3 
Inception, 14 , 
Indefinite goals, the contest to, ‘ 
197. 
India, the way to, 220 
Indian country, survey of, 149 
Indians, Central Pacific’s treaty — 
with, 231 
danger of attacks by, 144 
first real wreck by, 244 
plains, problem of, 232 
Infancy, 13 
Inspection, tour of, 150, 151 
Inspectors, findings of the, 306 
Insurance, advance of, 98 } 
Investigation, the Government, 
2890 
Iron, cost of, 98, 143 
freight rates on, 98 
Iron horse, opposition to ad- 
vance of, 233 


Judah, Theodore, 20, 45, 46, 49, 
54, 55 f 
Julesburg, founding Oe 257 
growth of, 258 
House, the, 258 


Kinney, William, 247, 248 


Labor, demands of, 191 
plenitude of, 144 


INDEX 


Labor, scarcity of, 104 
solving of problem of, 104 
the call for, 163 
Laborers, strike of, 110 
wages of, III, 172 
Land grants, 35 
Laramie, entrance of tracks 
into, 263 
“Gem City of Mountains,” 
the, 262 
Legerdemain, a piece of Yan- 
kee, 301 
Lewis, Fred, 247, 248 
Lineoln, Abraham, 27, 84, 120, 
204 
Loans, interest on in California, 
IOI 
Locomotive, first, 14 
Locomotives, difference 
tween, 215 
meeting of, 226 
Lord, Daniel, opinion of, 93 
Lots, cost of, 260 
sale of, 262 


be- 


Machine shop, opening of, 155 
Mail contract, transfer of, 28 
“ March to the Sea,” the second, 
175 
Massacre, the Plum Creek, 244 
Material, a call for, 185 
delivery of, 98 
prices of, 98, I0o 
unusual method of transport- 
ing, 122 
McClure, Colonel Alexander, 
27, 287 
views of, 29 
Meeting, a thanksgiving, 285 
Message, relaying of the, 223 
Military, defense by, 234 


Military departments, protec- 
tion by, 233 

Minkler, H. H., 202, 218 

Missouri River, survey of first 

forty miles, 90 

terminus, 83 

Montague, Samuel S., 102 

Mormon route, 24 

Mormons, predictions of the, 
268 

Mountains, methods of crossing, 
139 

Muster, the Stanford, 214 


Nebraska legislature, petition 
of, 27 

Nevada, first locomotive into, 
126 


prize offer of legislature, 58 
proposal of first legislature, 
58 
Newcastle, arrival at, 104 
New Government provisions, 63 
New York, first excursion from, 
146 
North Platte, boom of, 256 
Northern route, 24 


Ogden, arrival of track at, 268 
Ogden, Henry B., 80 
the entrance to, 168, 194 
Ogden, William B., 32 
Omaha, breaking of ground for, 
86 
one thousand miles from, 193 
wire trouble at, 221 
Opposition, allegations of, 58, 
59 
Oregon and California Trail, 
the, 133, 134 


313 


INDEX 


Overland Stage, the, 122, 166, 
307 
telegraph wires, connecting of 
the, 176 
trade, inauguration of, 228 
travel, pronounced features 
of, 300 


Pacific Hotel, the, 270 
Pacific Railroad, convention of, 
28 
footsteps of the, 254 
guide books to, 302, 303 
proposed route, 28 
system of meal stations, 
the, 299, 300 
the great, 2907 
Palisades, the, 188 
Parker, Rev. Samuel, 16 
Passengers, first transcontinen- 
tal, 228 
Platte Valley, survey of, 86 
Plum Creek, exodus of popu- 
lation of, 249 
Plumbe, John, Esq., 17 
Pneumonia, spread of, 253 
Pondir, Broker John, 91, 92 
Population, increase of 
Omaha, 144 
Potter Station, attack on, 252 
Powder, cost of, 121 
increase in monthly bill, 125 
Press, speculations of the, 194 
Promontory Point, the grade 
to, 193 
Summit, celebration, the, 304 
town, 270 
Prosperity, the harbinger of, 
262 
Public sentiment, adverse feel- 
ing of, 104 


in 


Public apathy, 82, 83 

Pullman, George M., 281 

Purchasing, extravagance 
100 


Question, the Mormon, 161 


Rails, price of, 164 
purchase of, 54, 55 
the uniting of the, 206 
the Wedding of the, 212-226 
Railroad, bills, flooding of Con- 
gress with, 30 
building, a great era of, 229 
the miracle of, 174 
scheme for, 16 
the Utah Central, 180 
Railroads, agreements between, 
36 
“Rainless Belt,” the, 153 
Ratcliffe, Charles, 247, 248 
Rawlins, the terminal base of, 
265 
Receipts, gross, of road, 96 
Record, for year, 107 
the yearly, 160 
Records, the track, 207 
Red Desert, laying track across 
the, 173 
Reed, Samuel, 77, 280 
Refugees, return of the, 250 
Relay, the last, 195 
Reno, the growth of, 183 
“ Reporter,” the Corrine, 269 
Republic, size of, 20 
Republican party platform of 
1860, 28 
Resources, strengthening of, 106 
Rivalry between towns over 
terminus, 84 


314 


in, 3 


INDEX 


Rivals, statements circulated by, 
107, 108 
Road, acceptance of, 164 
cost of through California, 
127, 128 
halting of work on the, 160 
Roads, the compromise be- 
tween, 198 
“Roaring” towns, 
of, 270, 271 
Rockwell, Congressman, report 
of, 82 
Rolling stock, 1867, 164 
arrival of at Omaha, 94, 95 
_ prices of, 189 
‘purchase of, 54, 55 
Route, adoption of new, 124 
changing of, 133 
difficulty of, 106 
the all-air, 304 
the temporary, I9I 
Rusling, General James A., 286, 
291 


uniqueness 


Sacramento, excursion to, 115 
Salt Lake crossing, abandoning 
of the, 169 
Scare, the Indian, 184 
Schedule, establishment of reg- 
ular, 252 
the regular, 206 
Scrip, value of, 261 
Semi-centennial, the 
Spike, 203 


Golden 


Senate, amendments of, 34 


Serenade, an Indian, 284 

Seymour, Colonel Silas, 77, 90, 
QI, 131 

Sheridan, General, 289 

Sherman, Major General Wil- 
liam T., 79, 289 


Sherman Summit, 141 
Shipment, delays in, 100 
Sierra Nevada Mountains, fix- 
ing the western base of, 66, 67 
Silver Palace cars, the, 298 
Sioux, attacks of, 235, 237, 230, 
244, 251, 252 
Skeptics, assertions of, 107 
Smallpox, epidemic, the, 196 
Snowsheds, building of, 127 
cost of, 127 
Snowslides, danger from, 127 
South Yuba, penetration to, 117 
Special, the Stanford, 208 
Speed, cost of, 195 
rate of, 287 
Spike-droppers, records of, 203 
Spike, the last, 207 
Stage line, shortening of, 159 
Stanford, Josiah, 42 
Stanford, Leland, 41, ror, 
207, 210, 219, 223, 224, 277 
Stansbury, Captain Howard, 24 
Stanley, Henry M., 288, 280, 307 
Start, the, 13 
States, contributions from, 221 
Statisticians, estimates of, 147 
Stock, prices of, 101 
shares, sale of, 87 
Stockholders, meeting of, 85 
Strobridge, J. H., 103, 110, 116, 
125, 186, 196, 200, 202, 214, 218, 
272 
Summit tunnel, the, 120 
completion of, 126 
Sumner, Charles, 21 
Supplies, precarious transfer of, 
120 
transportation of, 143 
Survey, changing of original, 94 
hardships of, 149 


184, 


315 


INDEX 


Survey, line, difficulty of access 
to, 126 

perils of, 238 

the Evans, 168 

the Thomas H. Bates, 241 

the Union Pacific, 197 
Surveyors, orders to, 242 
Surveys, 26 

of 1865, final result of the, 135 


Tariff, reduction of, 206 

Telegraph line, accompanying 
of, I17 

Tent, the big, 264 

Terminal, locating of first, 131 

Terminus, the common, 304 
the Union Pacific, 212 
the winter, 181 

The Comstock vein, 49 

The “ Dutch Flat” swindle, 57 

The “ Little Congress,” 30 

The Washoe excitement, 49 

Thirty-fifth Parallel Trail, the, 
25 

Thompson, William; scalping 
of, 246, 249-251 

Tie, description of, 208 
camps, planning of, 155 
common, substitution of, 226 
the silver-plated, 218 

Ties, cost of in summer, 172 
oak, cost of, 143 
price of, 185 

Todd, Reverend Dr. John, 215, 
218 

Towns, founding of new, 116 
the “ roaring,” 254 

Track, abandoning of section 
of, 127 


Track, construction records 
broken, 156 
difficulty of clearing, 127 
gauge, changing of, 60-63 
record for five months, 146 
Track-laying; record of Central 
crew, 200-202 


Tracks, entrance into Reno, 127 
progress of work on, 105 
Traffic, interruption of, 209 
paralyzation of, 250 
Trails, blood on the, 231 
Train, a rich, 249 
Train, George Francis, 86, 145, © 
255, 281, 285, 286 
the excursion, 282, 283 
Trains, derailing of, by red-— 
skins, 144 4 
Travellers, first detachment of © 
for coast, 295 E 
records of early, 287 
Trevithick, Richard, 14 
Tunnels, requirement of ten, 118 © 
Tussle, the ultimate, 190 
Two-miles-a-day gait, the, 174 


Union Pacific men and methods, - 


69 ; 
Union Pacific Railroad, boast of 
the, 173 
construction problems of, 
142 
cost of, 304, 305 
inspection of, 1869, 306 
length of, 1867, 287 
progress of the, 129 
Pullman service on the, 
207 
terminal bases of, 255 


310 


INDEX 


Van Lennep, David, 78, 145 


War, ending of, 105 
Warriors, plains, favorite at- 
tractions for, 242 
Wasatch, the survey across the, 
198 
the winter terminal of, 267 
Washington, the formal an- 
nouncement to, 225 
Waste, the uninhabitable, 308 
Weather, difficulties of, 210 
Weber Canyon, a tour of, 210 
West, a genius of, 227 
a second train from the, 216 
Western Empire, rumors of a, 
28 
“Western World,” the, 209 
“What the Engines Said,” 227, 
228 


White Pine craze, the, 110 
Whitney, Asa, 17, 20, 25 
“ Wickedest city in America,” 
the, 50, 257 
Wilkes, George, scheme of, 18 
Wilson, Senator Henry, 38 
Winter of 1866-67, uncommon 
severity of, II9 
the rigors of, 190 
the sting of, 178 
Wood, cost of, 143 
Work, cessation of, 104 
World, the signal to the, 223 
the Western, 288 
Wreck, description of by In- 
dians, 245 


Young, Brigham, 88, 161, 162, 
180, 216, 288 


317 


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